Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
"Daily Motivations"
One of the best ways to ensure that values "happen" is to treat them like work rules. -- David Cottrell
Interpersonal Conflicts … When There’s No Time for Planning
It’s bound to happen. Sooner or later you’ll be caught off guard – finding yourself smack dab in the middle of an unexpected conflict with someone on your team. You’re in it before you know it, and there’s no time for formulating a well-thought-out resolution strategy. You’ve got to respond in some way, and you have to do it NOW! What do you do? How can you keep the situation from escalating and ending up some-where you DON’T want to be? Here are a few suggestions:
Stop, breath, and think. Stop whatever you’re doing, take a couple of deep breaths to control your tension, and then immediately (and quickly) think about exactly what you need to do and say next.
Acknowledge the conflict by saying something like: Michael, I’m sensing that there are some issues between the two of us that we need to talk through, or, Kim, I’m feeling that I might have done something to upset you. Can we talk about it?
Buy some time. Suggest that you meet at a later time that day (or the following day) so that you both have an opportunity to relax a little and gather your thoughts. If the other person agrees, use the time to prepare for the meeting. If the person doesn’t agree on a time delay …
Take it somewhere else (if other coworkers are present). That way, you’ll avoid disrupting the rest of the group – and you’ll eliminate any temptations you and the other person might have to “showboat” or maintain some bogus image in front of your teammates. Suggest a different venue with words such as: It’s best for everyone if we keep this just between us. Where else would you feel comfortable talking?
Keep it respectful. Do your absolute best to conduct yourself in a calm and respectful manner – regardless of how the other person responds. Will it be easy? Of course not! But that doesn’t change the fact that although you can’t control what others do, you certainly can (and do) control your own behavior.
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
"Let the Holy Spirit fill and control you." (Ephesians 5:18).
A senior pastor from one of America's leading churches came to talk with me after hearing my message on "How to Be Filled With the Spirit." This Christian leader told me, "Dr. Bright, my life will never be the same after tonight, I have been a pastor for more than twenty years, but until now, I have never understood how to be empowered and controlled by the Holy Spirit as a way of life. I can hardly wait to share this with my church members."
I was telling him something every Christian should already know. What could be more basic to the believer than the filling of the Holy Spirit? Yet I find that most Christians live in the darkness of their own human efforts to live up to God's standards. This is a struggle that will always end in defeat and frustration.
Our gracious and awesome Savior and Lord never meant for us to attempt in our feeble abilities what He can do through us with His unlimited supernatural power.
"The Patriot Post"
"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. ... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?" -- John Adams, Diary, June 2, 1778
"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." -- James Wilson, Of the Study of Law in the United States, Circa, 1790
"[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution." -- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 81, 1788
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." -- Benjamin Franklin (attributed), letter to Benjamin Vaughn, March 14, 1783
"Find Law"
GM Asset Sale Approved By Bankruptcy Court
IN RE: GENERAL MOTORS
(U.S. Bankr. Ct., S.D. N.Y., Jul. 5, 2009) - U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber has ordered that General Motors is free to sell its assets. He noted that a liquidation sale would "leave nothing for the stockholders," and affect plaintiffs in pending personal injury lawsuits. Read more...
http://news.lp.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/gm/gm-asset-sale-order70509.html
Related Resources
• Bankruptcy judge OKs GM sale plan
http://news.lp.findlaw.com/ap/f/1310/07-06-2009/20090706010504_20.html
"The Web"
RNLA (Republican National Lawyers Association)
http://www.rnla.org/Speakers.asp
Boehner Republican Energy Solutions on Fox
Boehner Endorses Mandatory Review Period for Major Spending Bills
Prayer American Soldier
http://www.hagmayer.com/PrayerAmericanSoldier.html
Roger Stone: No Plus In Palin Staying As Alaska Governor
http://video.newsmax.com/?bcpid=20972460001&bclid=22770166001&bctid=28652082001
Welcome to Obamacare Theater
By Michelle Malkin
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50553
The White House sure likes to put on a show. Fresh off its joint stage production with ABC News, the Obama administration broadcast another health-care propaganda play under the guise of a citizen “town hall.”
Chicago consigliere and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett managed the floor and human props for Obama. In a telling moment as the event kicked off, she protested a wee bit much: “I want to emphasize that the president has not seen the questions ahead of time.” The audience responded with polite laughter.
But the denials of pre-planning and stacked decks deserve nothing but derisive mockery. Obama’s town hall was filled with backroom players and a supporting cast of socialized medicine activists and ideologues.
One of the three lucky audience members whom Obama chose for questioning was Jason Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum works for the Washington, D.C.-based Health Care for America Now (HCAN). That’s the same K Street Astroturf outfit I reported on last week—the one with a $40 million budget to lobby for government-run health care. The one inextricably linked to left-wing billionaire George Soros.
Let’s look at who else miraculously drew a golden ticket. Another one of the three softball-tossing citizen questioners at the White House forum identified herself as a member of the Service Employees International Union. That’s the same SEIU whose president, Andy Stern, boasted of spending nearly $61 million in members’ dues to elect Barack Obama. It’s the same union that produced Patrick Gaspard, former SEIU health-care lobbyist and now White House director of the Office of Political Affairs.
But the Obama health-care town hall’s climactic moment came when the consoler in chief plucked Debby Smith from the crowd to tell her personal health-care horror story. She choked back tears as she talked of her battle with kidney cancer, her joblessness and her lack of insurance. Obama hugged the trembling woman and dubbed her “Exhibit A” for his massive entitlement program.
Debby Smith, however, is no ordinary patient. While she may be “unemployed,” she has been rather busy working for the Obama campaign—as a volunteer for Organizing for America. It’s the old Obama for Change political machine now housed under the Democratic National Committee. Smith has also identified herself as a worker for the Virginia Organizing Project, which has been coordinating lobbying trips and health-care forums with HCAN. Yes, that same HCAN.
In December, Smith moderated “a community discussion on health care issues” in Appalachia, Va., and told her local paper that the meeting “would be reported back to former Sen. Tom Daschle, who has been directed by President-elect Barack Obama to form a committee to report on health-care issues.”
Daschle may be out of the spotlight since his Health and Human Services Cabinet-nomination fiasco. But he is in constant contact with Team Obama. As he told The Associated Press earlier this week in a media meeting on health-care reform, “We interact with them daily.” No doubt.
Veteran liberal journalist Helen Thomas earned some accolades for challenging the tightly controlled White House events. But where was she back in March, when Team Obama pulled the same stunt? At a health-care event in the East Room, the questioners included an Obama donor, a Democratic National Committee member, a former Democratic candidate for the Virginia statehouse who had publicly endorsed Obama and a member of the SEIU. Yes, that SEIU.
The growing irritation of the once-smitten Beltway media is better late than never, I suppose. But one wonders what took so long for the sedatives to wear off the watchdogs. Team Obama has screamed “kabuki” from day one.
Please Pray for our country
I remember reading about the children of Israel who turned from God time and time again, only to realize their mistake and pray for forgiveness. Each time, God would forgive them and they would walk with him for a time. So, I am going to ask you to join me in praying for our nation every day. Please read the email below. God is in control.
May God Have Mercy On America ; Protect Our Troops
When we were in Texarkana last week, there were signs in people's yards that said, " America , prayer is our only hope" - with 2 Chron. 7:14 underneath. We certainly need God's help!
I have no idea who started this, but I certainly agree with this e-mail. I heard a preacher on TV tonight who said if we pray for our nation that things will turn around.
After a day of contemplation and soul searching, I have decided to reach out to my friends and relatives and ask you to do something that has been troubling me for a long time.
Our nation is/has been on the slippery slope for a long time. If you look around you will find corruption, greed, moral decay, and a steady move away from the things that made us great. The principles upon which this nation was founded are no longer our backbone.
However, we can reverse this trend.
2 Chron. 7:14 in God's Word, He states, "If my people who are called by my Name will humble themselves and pray And seek my face and turn from their Wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven and will forgive their sin and Heal their land."
I am convinced that we must pray for our nation and its leaders and ask for forgiveness. So I ask you to join me in this plea to our Lord.
Would you please send this to people in your address book? Ask them to pray EVERY DAY. (25 to the 5th power is 9,765,625 people.) IMAGINE if each person reaches TEN others... Or all TWENTY FIVE!
If you do and they comply, we will lift up millions and millions of prayers a day to our Creator. He will hear us, and in faith will answer.
Here's a quote from Ronald Reagan: "If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."
I truly believe this is why the United States of America is in the shape it's in today.
Most people have forgotten that we are ONE NATION UNDER GOD! Let us as Christians stand up and remind people of this.
A Beautiful & Moving Touching Story
Author Unknown
The man slowly looked up. This was a woman clearly accustomed to the finer things of life. Her coat was new. She looked like that she had never missed a meal in her life. His first thought was that she wanted to make fun of him, like so many others had done before.
"Leave me alone," he growled.
To his amazement, the woman continued standing. She was smiling -- her even white teeth displayed in dazzling rows.
"Are you hungry?" she asked.
"No," he answered sarcastically. "I've just come from dining with the president. Now go away". The woman's smile became even broader. Suddenly the man felt a gentle hand under his arm.
"What are you doing, lady?" the man asked angrily. "I said to leave me alone.
Just then a policeman came up. "Is there any problem, ma'am?" he asked.
"No problem here, officer," the woman answered. "I'm just trying to get this man to his feet. Will you help me?"
The officer scratched his head. "That's old Jack. He's been a fixture around here for a couple of years. What do you want with him?"
"See that cafeteria over there?" she asked. "I'm going to get him something to eat and get him out of the cold for awhile."
"Are you crazy, lady?" the homeless man resisted. "I don't want to go in there!" Then he felt strong hands grab his other arm and lift him up. "Let me go, officer. I didn't do anything."
"This is a good deal for you, Jack," the officer answered. "Don't blow it."
Finally, and with some difficulty, the woman and the police officer got Jack into the cafeteria and sat him at a table in a remote corner. It was the middle of the morning, so most of the breakfast crowd had already left and the lunch bunch had not yet arrived. The manager strode across the cafeteria and stood by his table.
"What's going on here, officer?" he asked. "What is all this. Is this man in trouble?"
"This lady brought this man in here to be fed," the policeman answered.
"Not in here!" the manager replied angrily. "Having a person like that here is bad for business."
Old Jack smiled a toothless grin. "See, lady. I told you so. Now if you'll let me go. I didn't want to come here in the first place."
The woman turned to the cafeteria manager and smiled. "Sir, are you familiar with Eddy and Associates, the banking firm down the street?"
"Of course I am," the manager answered impatiently. "They hold their weekly meetings in one of my banquet rooms."
"And do you make a goodly amount of money providing food at these weekly meetings?"
"What business is that of yours?"
"I, sir, am Penelope Eddy, president and CEO of the company."
"Oh."
The woman smiled again. "I thought that might make a difference." She glanced at the cop who was busy stifling a giggle. "Would you like to join us in a cup of coffee and a meal, officer?"
"No thanks, ma'am," the officer replied. "I'm on duty."
"Then, perhaps, a cup of coffee to go?"
"Yes, ma’am. That would be very nice."
The cafeteria manager turned on his heel "I'll get your coffee for you right away, officer."
The officer watched him walk away. "You certainly put him in his place," he said.
"That was not my intent. Believe it or not, I have a reason for all this."
She sat down at the table across from her amazed dinner guest she stared at him intently. "Jack, do you remember me?"
Old Jack searched her face with his old, rheumy eyes "I think so -- I mean you do look familiar."
"I'm a little older perhaps," she said. "Maybe I've even filled out more than in my younger days when you worked here, and I came through that very door, cold and hungry."
"Ma'am?" The officer said questioningly. He couldn't believe that such a magnificently dressed woman could ever have been hungry.
"I was just out of college," the woman began. "I had come to the city looking for a job, but I couldn't find anything. Finally I was down to my last few cents and had been kicked out of my apartment. I walked the streets for days. It was February and I was cold and nearly starving. I saw this place and walked in on the off chance that I could get something to eat."
Jack lit up with a smile. "Now I remember," he said. "I was behind the serving counter.
You came up and asked me if you could work for something to eat. I said that it was against company policy."
"I know," the woman continued. "Then you made me the biggest roast beef sandwich that I had ever seen, gave me a cup of coffee, and told me to go over to a corner table and enjoy it. I was afraid that you would get into trouble. Then, when I looked over, I saw you put the price of my food in the cash register. I knew then that everything would be all right."
"So you started your own business?" Old Jack said.
"I got a job that very afternoon. I worked my way up. Eventually I started my own business, that, with the help of God, prospered." She opened her purse and pulled out a business card. "When you are finished here, I want you to pay a visit to a Mr. Lyons. He's the personnel director of my company. I'll go talk to him now and I'm certain he'll find something for you to do around the office." She smiled. "I think he might even find the funds to give you a little advance so that you can buy some clothes and get a place to live until you get on your feet. If you ever need anything, my door is always opened to you."
There were tears in the old man's eyes. "How can I ever thank you?” he said.
"Don't thank me," the woman answered. "To God goes the glory. Thank Jesus. He led me to you."
Outside the cafeteria, the officer and the woman paused at the entrance before going their separate ways. "Thank you for all your help, officer," she said.
"On the contrary, Ms. Eddy," he answered. "Thank you. I saw a miracle today, something that I will never forget. And...And thank you for the coffee."
If you have missed knowing me, you have missed nothing.
If you have missed some of my emails, you might have missed a laugh.
But, if you have missed knowing my LORD and SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST, you have missed everything in the world
Have a Wonderful Day and May God Bless You Always
God is so big He can cover the whole world with his Love and so small He can curl up inside your heart.
A U.S./U.N. Plot Against Anti-Communist Honduras
President Obama is "wrong" in his effort to save former President Manuel Zealot, who was coddling up to Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, Iranian President Ahmadinejad, and others of the Socialist and/or Communist leaders. The Honduran coup was successful in preserving a free democracy. - oyh
AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/a-u.s.-u.n.-plot-against-anti-communist-honduras/
Complicating plans by the Obama White House and its U.N. allies for a forced return of the former president, Honduras Foreign Minister Enrique Ortez told CNN en Espanol that Zelaya was implicated in drug trafficking from Venezuela into the U.S.
The people of Honduras are pleading for media fairness and understanding of how they saved their democratic system of government from an international conspiracy based in Venezuela and Cuba. In desperate messages to the outside world, Hondurans want America to know they do not want former President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya returned to power through the intervention of the United States and the United Nations.
On Tuesday the leftist governments of Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez sponsored a United Nations resolution that condemned the people of Honduras for resisting the spread of communism by evicting a would-be dictator. Many people in Honduras view "Mel" as a puppet of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who is destroying the democratic system and the opposition in that country.
In Honduras, demonstrators have appealed to the media to tell the truth. One sign said in Spanish: "CNN: That the entire world opens its eyes...Honduras wants peace not a dictatorship."
Our media are content to report on the turnout of a couple hundred pro-Zelaya protesters in Honduras, ignoring the many thousands that have demonstrated in support of what their government has done. Some of the demonstrators carried signs saying, "Peace and democracy. Out with Mel and Chavez." Others said, "Democracy yes; communism no."
A "Tribute to the Heroes of Honduras" has been posted on the web and captures the true sentiments of the people of Honduras.
In the face of a media blackout, many Hondurans have contacted me through the new media. One said, "I want to warmly thank you for your article supporting the real issue of constitutional impeachment on Manuel Zelaya Rosales." Later, this person informed me that "There is a march supporting President Micheletti and you don't see that on the [U.S.] media, the manifestation of the people in favor of what our institutions did is by far bigger than the mobs protesting violently against Zelaya's ouster."
"Thanks for your support to the political situation in Honduras," another said. "Writers like yourself are what Hondurans needs to let the world know that what happened was an act to preserve the constitutional rights of the country."
Another wrote, "I read your article and it's exactly what happened. If you could read the blog http://hondurancoup.blogspot.com/ it contains details of what moved our military and the other two branches of our government to act as they did. I surely hope you could make this public and somehow justice will overcome procedure. What's important are the facts."
This blog, which tells "The true story behind the alleged coup," notes that "Former President Zelaya is sick for power, a true hypocrite, corrupt and the King of Misinformation. His plot to break the constitutional order and the rule of law in our country has led us into a profound social and political crisis, on which he has bet all of his success on the generation of hatred between classes. His actions have been marked by dividing and confusing Honduran people by adopting the style, advice and funding from left-wing leaders such as Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and Daniel Ortega."
However, an anti-communist alliance called UnoAmerica, the Union of Democratic Organizations of America, has recognized the new government of Honduras and urges support for it, issuing a statement saying that "in Honduras there has not been a blow to the state, but rather a constitutional succession, perfectly legitimate, after the intent of ex-president Manuel Zelaya to violate the constitution and maintain power, following the mandate of Hugo Chavez."
Regarding Obama's ally, Venezuelan ruler Chavez, UnoAmerica said that "He is tied to Colombian narcotics terrorism (FARC) and to the government of [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad. He finances the Cuban dictatorship. He permanently tramples the Constitution and kidnaps the liberties of the people. He commits electoral fraud. He forcibly represses peaceful and disarmed Venezuelans. He closes means of communication. He hates the Catholic Church."
Rebutting charges of a "military coup," UnoAmerica noted that "the Armed Forces of Honduras have been limited to obey the judicial mandate, that which obligates a reestablishment of constitutional order, thus showing its subordination to the civil authority."
Complicating plans by the Obama White House and its U.N. allies for a forced return of the former president, Honduras Foreign Minister Enrique Ortez told CNN en Espanol that Zelaya was implicated in drug trafficking from Venezuela into the U.S.
"Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds...and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking," he said. "We have proof of all of this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA [U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration] has it," he added.
At a U.N. meeting on October 13, 2008, Zelaya had openly called for the legalization of drugs-supposedly to reduce violence-just weeks after the George Soros-funded Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy had met to discuss how to pursue such a course of action. The group subsequently released a report calling for a "paradigm shift" on how to handle the illegal drug problem. Billionaire Soros, a long-time funder of campaigns to legalize dangerous drugs, has purchased the services of several former Latin American government officials to push this cause.
Zelaya's comments were immediately denounced by U.N. Office of Drug Control regional representative José Manuel Martinez Morales, who said such an approach was to "stick our heads under the sand like ostriches and accept the drug trade which is annihilating our youth."
Last November Zelaya appeared with Soros at a U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean conference in the Dominican Republic.
At the Tuesday news conference at the United Nations, where a resolution was adopted in favor of returning Zelaya to power, the ousted Marxist ruler was asked if the United States had been behind the "coup" that forced him out. No, Zelaya said. "The United States has changed a great deal," he explained. He went on to say, "I have listened to President Obama. It is not only that he condemns the events, but he has demanded the restoration of the President," referring to himself.
On this point, Zelaya was correct. The United States has certainly changed under Obama. When Ronald Reagan was president, the United States assisted pro-freedom forces and endeavored to keep the communists out of Central America. Now, the United States intervenes on behalf of the communists and their allies, using the U.N. as cover.
Zelaya held his press conference at the U.N. with the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel D'Escoto, a communist priest who received the Lenin Peace Prize from the old Soviet Union.
D'Escoto is another one of Obama's allies, having worked with his Ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, to forge a new international socialist order at the recent United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis. The scheme involves world government financed by global taxes, another cause that is very popular with George Soros.
Pictured: Elephants march through hotel lobby after it was built on their migration trail
By Mail Foreign Service
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1065865/Pictured-Elephants-march-hotel-lobby-built-migration-trail.html
These amazing pictures show why you shouldn't get between an African elephant and its favourite food.
Mfuwe Lodge in Zambia happens to have been built next to a mango tree that one family of pachyderms have always visited when the fruit ripens.
When they returned one year and found the luxury accommodation in the way, they simply walked through reception.
Let the porter grab your trunk: An elephant wanders through Mfuwe Lodge, in the South Luangwa National Park, Zambia
The animals came in two-by-two: Hotel staff and visitors have got used to the elephants' impromptu strolls through reception
Now the family group, headed by matriarch Wonky Tusk, return every November to gorge on mangos - up to four times a day.
Andy Hogg, 44, director at the Bushcamp Company that runs the Lodge, has lived in South Luangwa National Park since 1982.
But in all his years of dealing with wild animals he has never seen such intimate interaction between man and beast.
'This is the only place in the world where elephants freely get so close to humans,' says the 44-year-old.
'The elephants start coming through base camp in late November of each year to eat the mangos from our trees.
'When they are ripe they come through and they stand about for four to six weeks coming back each day or second day to eat the mangos.'
Living in the 5,000 square mile national park, the ten-strong elephant herd are led to the lodge each day by Wonky Tusk.
Migration route: The hotel was built directly in the path of the elephants' route to one of their favourite foods - mangos
'The most interesting thing about this is that they are wild animals and are certainly not tame,' explains Andy.
'They come through the lodge to eat the fruit.
'There are ten in that herd and it is only that herd that comes through. It is a strange thing.
'The matriarchal in the herd is Wonky Tusk, and she brings the nine others through and they come and go as they please.'
Mfuwe Lodge consists of seven camps and the base camp where the elephants come through.
Employing 150 staff, the management of the lodge are happy to report that there have been no incidents involving the elephants to date.
'The elephants do get reasonably close to the staff as you can see with the pictures of the elephants near the reception,' he explains.
'But we do not allow the guests to get too close.'
Check-in: But it's unlikely the lodge has a room big enough for its elephant guests
'Guests can stand in the lounge are but as long as there is a barrier between the elephants and the guests that is okay,' he added.
'The elephants are not aggressive but you don't want to tempt anything as they are wild animals.
'It is the elephants choice to come into base camp and they have been doing it for the last ten years.
'There are other wild mango trees around and they seem to prefer this one.'
And even thought the lodge was unwittingly built upon the path, Andy says they had no idea the elephants would insist on returning.
'It wasn't a design mistake - no-one really knew they were going to come through,' he says.
'The lodge was built and then the elephants started coming through afterwards.
Gentle giants: The leader of the ten-strong herd is matriarch Wonky Tusk
'We keep people at a safe distance. They are obviously close enough to see what is going on from pretty close quarters but we also make sure we have staff around to make sure the elephants don't get too close.
'But as I said they are still wild and still dangerous. They are huge beasts and untamed.
'We have bricks and walls between the elephants and the guests such as the counter and other barriers to stop them getting to people and if they try to there is enough time for people to get away.'
Naturally, the lodge becomes a busier attraction for both elephants and guests during November time.
'We find that we get more people visiting us during the elephant migration because of the unique experience of being so close to wild animals in an unusual environment,' says Andy.
'But as I said this is a totally natural phenomenon, the elephants come here of their own accord and it is certainly a rare but magnificent sight.'
Mfuwe Lodge: The hotel is set in an idyllic national parkland
"The e-mail Bag"
KIDS IN CHURCH
http://www.all-creatures.org/humor/kidsinchurch.html
3-year-old, Reese: "Our Father, Who does art in heaven, Harold is His name. Amen."
A little boy was overheard praying: "Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it. I'm having a real good time like I am."
A Sunday school class was studying the Ten Commandments. They were ready to discuss the last one. The teacher asked if anyone could tell her what it was. Susie raised her hand, stood tall, and quoted, "Thou shall not take the covers off the neighbor's wife." (SO TRUE!!!)
After the christening of his baby brother in church, Jason sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car. His father asked him three times what was wrong. Finally, the boy replied, "That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home, and I wanted to stay with you guys."
I had been teaching my three-year old daughter, Caitlin, the Lord's Prayer for several evenings at bedtime, she would repeat after me the lines from the prayer. Finally, she decided to go solo. I listened with pride as she carefully enunciated each word right up to the end of the prayer: "Lead us not into temptation," she prayed, "but deliver us some E-mail. Amen."
And one particular four-year-old prayed, "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets." (HEY: Trespassing is trash!;-)
A Sunday school teacher asked her children, as they were on the way to church service, And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?" One bright little girl replied, "Because people are sleeping." (Another truism;-)
Six-year-old Angie and her four-year-old brother Joel were sitting together in church. Joel giggled, sang, and talked out loud. Finally, his big sister had had enough. You're not supposed to talk out loud in church." "Why? Who's going to stop me?" Joel asked. Angie pointed to the back of the church and said, "See those two men standing by the door? They're hushers."
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin, 5, Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, 'Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.'" Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, "Ryan, you be Jesus!"
A father was at the beach with his children when the four-year-old son ran up to him, grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore where a seagull lay dead in the sand. "Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked. "He died and went to Heaven," the Dad replied. The boy thought a moment and then said, "Did God throw him back down?"
A wife invited some people to dinner. At the table, she turned to their six-year-old daughter and said, "Would you like to say the blessing?" "I wouldn't know what to say," the girl replied. "Just say what you hear Mommy say," the wife answered. The daughter bowed her head and said, "Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?"
River Walk
There's this blonde out for a walk. She comes to a river and sees another blonde on the opposite bank. "Yoo-hoo!" she shouts, "How can I get to the other side?"
The second blonde looks up the river then down the river and shouts back, "You ARE on the other side."
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Support Honduras and Democracy
There are times when a free society will do the right thing to oust Fascism, Socialism, Communism, or some other type of totalitarianism government. America declared freedom from England in 1776. We saw movements of this type of activity in Tiananmen Square, China in June, 1989. Then there was a 2004 coup in Haiti. Just recently, we saw a movement to overturn repression in Iran.
Now, we come to Honduras. It appears ousted President Manueal Zelaya was making efforts to extend his government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic-Central_America-United_States_Free_Trade_Agreement. On June 28, 2009, there was an ousting of Honduras’ President Manuel Zelaya http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529885,00.html.
According to the Associated Press, ‘Micheletti's supporters say the army was justified in ousting Zelaya — on orders of Congress and the Supreme Court — because he had called a referendum which they claim he intended to use to extend his rule. Zelaya denies that and has said he will no longer press for constitutional changes’ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090704/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_honduras_coup .
It appears there may be an overwhelming support of the coup, ousting President Zelaya, as the Hondurans Congress has named Roberto Micheletti President, and he immediately declared a Democracy for all Hondurans.
From the Tico Times, ‘…United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS), which gave the de facto government 72 hours to cede power. The ultimatum, which could result in expulsion of Honduras from the OAS in the event Zelaya is not reinstated, expires July 4’ http://www.ticotimes.net/topstoryarchive/2009_07/070309.htm.
President Obama is "wrong" in his effort to save former President Manuel Zelaya, who was coddling up to Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, Iranian President Ahmadinejad, and others of the Socialist and/or Communist leaders http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3752. The Honduran coup was successful on orders of Congress and the Supreme Court in preserving a free democracy.
President Obama must support the majority free Democracy over all totalitarianism governments. That is what America had stood in support of for over 233 years. The leaders in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and similar restrictive systems of its people are opposed to a true Democracy. I inspire President Obama to reverse his current position in support of a free democracy.
Costa Rican President Oscar Arias will mediate the standoff between former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and the current President Micheletti regime that overthrew him http://www.nowpublic.com/world/honduras-news-oscar-arias-mediate-zelaya-micheletti-talks.
Now, we come to Honduras. It appears ousted President Manueal Zelaya was making efforts to extend his government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic-Central_America-United_States_Free_Trade_Agreement. On June 28, 2009, there was an ousting of Honduras’ President Manuel Zelaya http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529885,00.html.
According to the Associated Press, ‘Micheletti's supporters say the army was justified in ousting Zelaya — on orders of Congress and the Supreme Court — because he had called a referendum which they claim he intended to use to extend his rule. Zelaya denies that and has said he will no longer press for constitutional changes’ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090704/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_honduras_coup .
It appears there may be an overwhelming support of the coup, ousting President Zelaya, as the Hondurans Congress has named Roberto Micheletti President, and he immediately declared a Democracy for all Hondurans.
From the Tico Times, ‘…United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS), which gave the de facto government 72 hours to cede power. The ultimatum, which could result in expulsion of Honduras from the OAS in the event Zelaya is not reinstated, expires July 4’ http://www.ticotimes.net/topstoryarchive/2009_07/070309.htm.
President Obama is "wrong" in his effort to save former President Manuel Zelaya, who was coddling up to Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, Iranian President Ahmadinejad, and others of the Socialist and/or Communist leaders http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3752. The Honduran coup was successful on orders of Congress and the Supreme Court in preserving a free democracy.
President Obama must support the majority free Democracy over all totalitarianism governments. That is what America had stood in support of for over 233 years. The leaders in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and similar restrictive systems of its people are opposed to a true Democracy. I inspire President Obama to reverse his current position in support of a free democracy.
Costa Rican President Oscar Arias will mediate the standoff between former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and the current President Micheletti regime that overthrew him http://www.nowpublic.com/world/honduras-news-oscar-arias-mediate-zelaya-micheletti-talks.
ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20090708
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
"My Comments"
Better A Few Hours Late Than Never At All. Sorry Folks!!
At five minutes and six seconds after 4 AM on the 8th of July this year, the time and date will be:
04:05:06 07/08/09.
This will never happen again in our lifetime -- (for another 100 years.... until 2109)
"Daily Motivations"
In business the competition will bite you if you keep running. If you stand still, they will swallow you. -- William Knudsen
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
"The LORD our God is just in everything He does." (Daniel 9:14)
In one of the worst travesties in American justice, four young men from Chicago with no history of violence were convicted of kidnapping, rape, and double murder. The bullet-riddled bodies of a young couple were found on May 12, 1978. Acting on an anonymous telephone tip, the police arrested the four suspects. News reports declared that the crime had been solved. The men were convicted, and two were sentenced to death row. Appeals failed; all looked hopeless.
But in September 1981, a tattered envelope arrived at the offices of the Chicago Lawyer magazine. That letter led Rob Warden, editor and publisher of the Chicago Lawyer, and Dennis Protess, professor at Northwestern School of Journalism, to investigate the case. They uncovered substantial evidence that ultimately exonerated the four convicts.
Finally, on July 2, 1996, Judge Thomas Fitzgerald ended the defendants' fight against an unjust sentence by reading, "All the convictions are vacated." The four prisoners were free! The next day, the state attorney's office charged the real killers.
Justice is a pillar of any society. It vindicates the innocent and punishes the guilty. All too often though, this standard is compromised for personal gain. Corrupt judges sometimes tilt the scales of justice; unscrupulous lawyers manipulate laws and juries; witnesses lie. Truth is often distorted to benefit the powerful.
Today, since our legal system can often be manipulated, many people mistakenly believe they can manipulate God's justice. But oh, how wrong they are! You can always count on God to act according to His perfectly just character.
"The Patriot Post"
"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy." -- Thomas Jefferson
Around the Nation: Alaska and Energy Independence
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has pulled off a feat that her predecessors have been working on for some 30 years: closing a deal to create a 1,712-mile natural gas pipeline in her state. The project went from dream to reality when Exxon Mobil, America's largest oil company, signed on to join a partnership with TransCanada, the company that holds the license for the $26 billion project. Rival energy companies, politicians in Juneau and in Washington all thought the project would never happen, but now they all want to join Palin in taking credit for it. And it's easy to see why.. Palin is just about the only elected leader who is actually walking the walk on energy independence in the United States. The need for natural gas will rise by more than 25 percent in the next 20 years, so there's no better time than the present to start a project like this one. It is slated for completion in 2018.
The BIG Lie
"Let me also address an illegitimate concern that's being put forward by those who are claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan Horse for a single-payer system. I'll be honest: There are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well. But I believe -- and I've taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief -- that it's important for our efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States. So when you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They're not telling the truth." -- President Barack Obama to the American Medical Association
When asked which countries' citizens enjoyed their socialized medicine, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs later admitted, "I don't know exactly the countries. ... I assume Canada, Britain, maybe France." Not the examples we'd pick to bolster Obama's case.
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49743
On Cross-Examination
"It's hard to know whether President Obama's health care 'reform' is naive, hypocritical or simply dishonest. Probably all three. The president keeps saying it's imperative to control runaway health spending. He's right. The trouble is that what's being promoted as health care 'reform' almost certainly won't suppress spending and, quite probably, will do the opposite." -- Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson
This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award
"I do not want the government to run things. I've got enough to do." -- President Barack Obama, attempting the equivalent of a Jedi mind trick: "These are not the droids you're looking for."
This Week's 'Braying, uh, Jackass' Award
"We are excited, uh, to see, uh, what appears to be a ro-robust debate taking place in Iran. And obviously after the speech that, uh, I made in Cairo we tried to send a clear message that we think there is the possibility of change, uhhh, aaaand -- ehhh, yuh-- oh -- Ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide, uh, but, uh, just a-as has been true in Lebanon, what's, uh -- can be true in Iran as well is that you're seeing people looking at new possibilities. And, uh, whoever, uh, ends up winning, uh, the election in Iran, uh, the fact that there's been a robust debate hopefully will help, uh, advance our ability to engage them in new ways.." -- Barack Hussein Obama
"Simple Truths"
Dancing In The Rain
http://www.danceintherainmovie.com/
"The Web"
Boehner Endorses Mandatory Review Period for Major Spending Bills
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRec6zzpJ7M&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Freadthebill%2Eorg%2F&feature=player_embedded
A dog named Isaiah 40:31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKohJ1k4oKA
This Week in Congress
Your Headlines, Your Issues, Your Opinions
Could Climate Change Bill Hurt Trade?
After the House's narrow approval of a climate change bill last month, the Senate will now have its say.
The debate on H.R. 2454 http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bill.xc?billnum=H.R.2454&congress has already focused on a proposed tariff on countries that do not reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Though he backs the bill, President Barack Obama does not support the tariff, which is stronglyopposed by China and India. But some environmentalists say it could help tackle a global problem.Visit the Congress.org home page
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/ to see stories and documents from around the Web that outline the pros and cons of a public health care option.
Senior Democrat Says Obama's Czars Unconstitutional
For President Obama to continue to name so many "Czars" in multiple departments, this is just another controlling from within the White House; yet, most of the masses fail to recognize as how their freedoms, one by one, are being taken away. - oyh
by Ken Klukowski
Last week President Obama appointed yet another “czar” with massive government power, answering only to him. Even before this latest appointment, the top-ranking Democrat in the Senate wrote President Obama a letter saying that these czars are unconstitutional. President Obama’s “czar strategy” is an unprecedented power grab centralizing authority in the White House, outside congressional oversight and in violation of the Constitution.
As of last week, Czar Kenneth Feinberg has the authority to set the pay scale for executives at any company receiving government money (and how many aren’t, these days?). Czar Feinberg has the power to say that someone’s pay is excessive, and to make companies cut that pay until the czar is pleased.
Congress did not give Czar Feinberg this authority. For that matter, Congress has not authorized any of the czars that President Barack Obama has created. Over the past thirty years presidents have each had one or two czars for various issues, and once the number went as high as five. But now, by some counts President Obama has created sixteen czars, and there may be more on the way. Each of these has enormous government power, and answers only to the president.
Ever since this practice of appointing czars began years ago, it has always been considered possible that they are all unconstitutional. But it never built to a critical mass to elicit a court fight. These czars were few and far between, and rarely did anything that seriously ruffled any feathers. But President Obama has taken this to an unprecedented level, to the point where these appointments are dangerous to our constitutional regime.
This has become too much for the longest-serving senator in U.S. history to stomach. Democratic Senator Robert Byrd is the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate. Even though Senate rules vest most powers in the Senate majority leader, the president pro tempore is a constitutional officer, and third in line to the U.S. presidency (after the vice president and the Speaker of the House). This office is held by a Democrat, who has been serving in the Senate since before Barack Obama was even born.
Senator Byrd wrote a letter to President Obama in February, criticizing the president’s strategy of creating czars to manage important areas of national policy. Senator Byrd said that these appointments violate both the constitutional system of checks and balances and the constitutional separation of powers, and is a clear attempt to evade congressional oversight. (Didn’t this White House promise unprecedented transparency?)
And Senator Byrd is exactly correct. The Constitution commands that government officers with significant authority (called “principal officers”) are nominated by the president but then are subject to a confirmation vote by the U.S. Senate. And principal officers include not only cabinet-level department heads, but go five levels deep in executive appointments, to include assistant secretaries and deputy undersecretaries.
Inferior officers are appointed either by the president, cabinet-level officers, or the courts. But even then, the Constitution specifies that only Congress can authorize the making of such appointments. For these inferior officers, only Congress can create their offices, and also specify who appoints them. And such officers are still answerable to Congress. They are subject to subpoena to testify before Congress, and Congress holds the power of the purse by making annual appropriations for their division or program.
White House officials, by contrast, cannot be compelled to appear before Congress and testify. They are alter-egos of the president himself, and as an agent of the Executive Office of the President they are entirely removed from Congress, and not answerable to Congress in any way. That was why during the Bush administration White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, Senior Advisor Karl Rove, and Counsel Harriet Miers could not be compelled to testify to Congress when President Bush invoked executive privilege (a battle they may well have won if they pressed their case all the way to the Supreme Court). Senior presidential aides advise the president alone, and the separation of powers forbids congressional interference in that relationship.
But that’s the problem with these czars. The president can have any advisors he wants, people who privately advise him or meet with others on his behalf, but have little or no actual authority to exert government power on anyone. These czars, however, are directly dictating policy, impacting millions of lives in the way that few assistant secretaries or deputy undersecretaries do.
The Founding Fathers specifically wrote the Constitution in a way to deny such absolute power to emanate from one person. That was why they required that no principal officers could exercise any power unless the U.S. Senate decided to confirm them. That was also why they specified that even for inferior officers only Congress could create their positions and could still require them to answer to Congress. The Founding Fathers were specifically blocking the type of centralized power that President Obama is currently exerting.
Fortunately, there is a remedy. Any person on the receiving end of an order from any of these czars has standing to challenge their constitutionality in court. Any person whose pay is deemed excessive by Kenneth Feinberg, or affected by any other czar, could file a federal suit asserting that the order is an unconstitutional exercise of government power, and have a court both invalidate the order and hold that the position itself doesn’t legally exist. Then everyone could just ignore these czars, because they would simply be private citizens, without the authority to order any of us to tie our shoes.
Let the lawsuits begin.
VERY INTERESTING - Give this one some deep thought! - oyh
1... The Garden of Eden was in Iraq
2. Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq, was the cradle of civilization!
3 . Noah built the ark in Iraq
4. The Tower of Babel was in Iraq
5. Abraham was from Ur, which is in Southern Iraq
6. Isaac's wife Rebekah is from Nahor, which is in Iraq
7. Jacob met Rachel in Iraq
8. Jonah preached in Nineveh - which is in Iraq
9... Assyria, which is in Iraq, conquered the ten tribes of Israel
10. Amos cried out in Iraq
11 Babylon, which is in Iraq, destroyed Jerusalem
12. Daniel was in the lion's den in Iraq
13. The three Hebrew children were in the fire in Iraq (Jesus had been in Iraq also as the fourth person in the Fiery Furnace!)
14. Belshazzar, the King of Babylon saw the 'writing on the wall' in Iraq
15. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, carried the Jews captive into Iraq
16. Ezekiel preached in Iraq
17. The wise men were from Iraq
18. Peter preached in Iraq
19. The 'Empire of Man' described in Revelation is called Babylon -- which was a city in Iraq, and you have probably seen this one: Israel is the nation most often mentioned in the Bible.
But do you know which nation is second?
It is Iraq!
However, that is not the name that is used in the Bible..
The names used in the Bible are Babylon , Land of Shinar, and Mesopotamia .... The word Mesopotamia means between the two rivers, more exactly between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers ...
The name Iraq means country with deep roots.
Indeed Iraq is a country with deep roots and is a very significant country in the Bible.
No other nation, except Israel, has more history and prophecy associated with it than Iraq and also, this is something to think about:
Since America is typically represented by an eagle. Saddam should have read up on his Muslim passages.
The following verse is from the Koran, (the Islamic Bible)
Koran ( 9:11) - For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle.. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah;
And there was peace.
(Note the verse number!) Hmmmmmmm?!
This is a ribbon for soldiers fighting in Iraq ..
Pass it on to everyone and pray.
Does Palin Have a Political Future?
NRO on what comes next for the governor.
An NRO Symposium
EDITOR’S NOTE: The all–Michael Jackson news networks switched gears this weekend when Alaska governor Sarah Palin announced that she is not running for reelection but will instead step down from office this month. Does Sarah Palin have a future in politics? Should she? National Review Online surveyed some political observers.
KELLYANNE CONWAY
It may confound old men and spinsters in the media that a mother of five would want to stop the madness and protect her brood from the relentlessand vicious attacks by people who literally don’t know anyone like her, but, at some level, Governor Palin should be taken at her word: She’s had enough.
The advent of the blogosphere means there is not a single unexpressed thought left in America. And one would be challenged to find someone more singularly excoriated by people whose opinions, issued from poison keyboards, matter so little (except perhaps to their cats).
But, as a private citizen, Governor Palin can unbind her hands, quit swallowing hard, and respond. She can also make a boatload of money with a bestseller or two, a spot on the speaking circuit, and a steady media gig. Palin can steep herself in foreign policy, become an advocate for issues that people actually care about — like special-needs children, a cause for which savaging her would be difficult — and help a national Republican party that is in no position to turn away any volunteers, let alone one for whom thousands cheer at events.
Palin has her critics and her patrons, and she surely has earned both admiration and consternation in the past ten months. But the beating she has taken from media and blogosphere snarks is undeserved and a little tired. If she were as irrelevant as they claim, she would not be under attack. If she were as dumb as they hope, her critics wouldn’t need to spend so much time saying so.
Palin has a future in politics or public policy or both — if she wants one. That’s a broader question than the possibility of a presidential run in 2012 or beyond. If she does pursue the presidency, she’ll have to earn it, but her cost of admission to the race should be no greater, and her burden of proof no higher, than those of the other governors — or the one-term senator/community-organizers who have come before her.
— Kellyanne Conway is president of a polling company, WomanTrend, and will soon be a mother of four.
The Islamic Revolution
"I did it for Islam but it wasn't easy to kill people. We have to remember who they are though - they're deceitful people who are against the Islamic Revolution."
A member of Iran's Basij militia feels a rumble of conscience and tries to rationalize it away. "Basij militiaman: 'I hoped it would never come to shooting them'," from France 24, July 3:
The Basij militia has been blamed for extreme brutality in the violent aftermath of the contested June 12 election in Iran. A Basij commander, who volunteers for one of the Tehran branch of the militia, describes his account of one the bloodiest clashes, on June 20.
Iran's Basij militia is a pro-government volunteer force which comes to the aid of the regime when unrest hits the streets. It was established by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 during the Iran-Iraq war. During the last three weeks the Basij has been called upon by the government to quell the post-election protests, in which at least 20 people were reported to have been killed. The opposition says the figure is much higher.
Mehdi (not his real name) is a 39-year-old Basij commander and a former classmate of one of our Observers from Tehran (who prefers not to be mentioned). Mehdi led a mission in the city centre, close to the Tehran military base, on June 20, one of the most violent days of the clashes.
I did shoot at people myself. I am a military man I have to obey my orders. The crowd was attacking us like crazy people; throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. We had to protect ourselves; to show we were serious, and we did warn them, shouting several times, before opening fire. But they continued to attack. I don't remember who I shot, I just tried to shoot at the people's feet.
Later, we moved back and went behind the vans in middle of the street and I ordered my unit to shoot into the ground in the hope of scaring the crowds from coming closer.
I hoped it would never come to shooting them. That night, I had a nightmare in which the protestors threw me on a fire. It's come back several times, and I can see the faces of the people I was ordered to shoot. I've asked a very spiritual mullah to pray for me.
I did it for Islam but it wasn't easy to kill people. We have to remember who they are though - they're deceitful people who are against the Islamic Revolution. You can't expect us to stay calm when they want to overthrow our regime."
"The e-mail Bag"
WOMEN'S REVENGE
"Cash, check or charge?" I asked, after folding items the woman wished to purchase. As she fumbled for her wallet, I noticed a remote control for a television set in her purse.
"So, do you always carry your TV remote?" I asked.
"No," she replied, "but my husband refused to come shopping with me, and I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him legally."
Medical Science?
Dr. Timothy McCarthy while receiving a medical award for creativity, reported his findings to the Fellows of plastic surgery, concluding with this case study: "Several years ago a woman was high on cocaine and marijuana and she rode a horse head-on into a train traveling 80 miles an hour. All I had left to work with was the woman's hair and the horse's ass. I was able to put them together and now she's Speaker of the House.
Now you know the rest of the story. - Just a joke folks! - oyh
"My Comments"
Better A Few Hours Late Than Never At All. Sorry Folks!!
At five minutes and six seconds after 4 AM on the 8th of July this year, the time and date will be:
04:05:06 07/08/09.
This will never happen again in our lifetime -- (for another 100 years.... until 2109)
"Daily Motivations"
In business the competition will bite you if you keep running. If you stand still, they will swallow you. -- William Knudsen
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
"The LORD our God is just in everything He does." (Daniel 9:14)
In one of the worst travesties in American justice, four young men from Chicago with no history of violence were convicted of kidnapping, rape, and double murder. The bullet-riddled bodies of a young couple were found on May 12, 1978. Acting on an anonymous telephone tip, the police arrested the four suspects. News reports declared that the crime had been solved. The men were convicted, and two were sentenced to death row. Appeals failed; all looked hopeless.
But in September 1981, a tattered envelope arrived at the offices of the Chicago Lawyer magazine. That letter led Rob Warden, editor and publisher of the Chicago Lawyer, and Dennis Protess, professor at Northwestern School of Journalism, to investigate the case. They uncovered substantial evidence that ultimately exonerated the four convicts.
Finally, on July 2, 1996, Judge Thomas Fitzgerald ended the defendants' fight against an unjust sentence by reading, "All the convictions are vacated." The four prisoners were free! The next day, the state attorney's office charged the real killers.
Justice is a pillar of any society. It vindicates the innocent and punishes the guilty. All too often though, this standard is compromised for personal gain. Corrupt judges sometimes tilt the scales of justice; unscrupulous lawyers manipulate laws and juries; witnesses lie. Truth is often distorted to benefit the powerful.
Today, since our legal system can often be manipulated, many people mistakenly believe they can manipulate God's justice. But oh, how wrong they are! You can always count on God to act according to His perfectly just character.
"The Patriot Post"
"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy." -- Thomas Jefferson
Around the Nation: Alaska and Energy Independence
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has pulled off a feat that her predecessors have been working on for some 30 years: closing a deal to create a 1,712-mile natural gas pipeline in her state. The project went from dream to reality when Exxon Mobil, America's largest oil company, signed on to join a partnership with TransCanada, the company that holds the license for the $26 billion project. Rival energy companies, politicians in Juneau and in Washington all thought the project would never happen, but now they all want to join Palin in taking credit for it. And it's easy to see why.. Palin is just about the only elected leader who is actually walking the walk on energy independence in the United States. The need for natural gas will rise by more than 25 percent in the next 20 years, so there's no better time than the present to start a project like this one. It is slated for completion in 2018.
The BIG Lie
"Let me also address an illegitimate concern that's being put forward by those who are claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan Horse for a single-payer system. I'll be honest: There are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well. But I believe -- and I've taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief -- that it's important for our efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States. So when you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They're not telling the truth." -- President Barack Obama to the American Medical Association
When asked which countries' citizens enjoyed their socialized medicine, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs later admitted, "I don't know exactly the countries. ... I assume Canada, Britain, maybe France." Not the examples we'd pick to bolster Obama's case.
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49743
On Cross-Examination
"It's hard to know whether President Obama's health care 'reform' is naive, hypocritical or simply dishonest. Probably all three. The president keeps saying it's imperative to control runaway health spending. He's right. The trouble is that what's being promoted as health care 'reform' almost certainly won't suppress spending and, quite probably, will do the opposite." -- Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson
This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award
"I do not want the government to run things. I've got enough to do." -- President Barack Obama, attempting the equivalent of a Jedi mind trick: "These are not the droids you're looking for."
This Week's 'Braying, uh, Jackass' Award
"We are excited, uh, to see, uh, what appears to be a ro-robust debate taking place in Iran. And obviously after the speech that, uh, I made in Cairo we tried to send a clear message that we think there is the possibility of change, uhhh, aaaand -- ehhh, yuh-- oh -- Ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide, uh, but, uh, just a-as has been true in Lebanon, what's, uh -- can be true in Iran as well is that you're seeing people looking at new possibilities. And, uh, whoever, uh, ends up winning, uh, the election in Iran, uh, the fact that there's been a robust debate hopefully will help, uh, advance our ability to engage them in new ways.." -- Barack Hussein Obama
"Simple Truths"
Dancing In The Rain
http://www.danceintherainmovie.com/
"The Web"
Boehner Endorses Mandatory Review Period for Major Spending Bills
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRec6zzpJ7M&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Freadthebill%2Eorg%2F&feature=player_embedded
A dog named Isaiah 40:31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKohJ1k4oKA
This Week in Congress
Your Headlines, Your Issues, Your Opinions
Could Climate Change Bill Hurt Trade?
After the House's narrow approval of a climate change bill last month, the Senate will now have its say.
The debate on H.R. 2454 http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bill.xc?billnum=H.R.2454&congress has already focused on a proposed tariff on countries that do not reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Though he backs the bill, President Barack Obama does not support the tariff, which is stronglyopposed by China and India. But some environmentalists say it could help tackle a global problem.Visit the Congress.org home page
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/ to see stories and documents from around the Web that outline the pros and cons of a public health care option.
Senior Democrat Says Obama's Czars Unconstitutional
For President Obama to continue to name so many "Czars" in multiple departments, this is just another controlling from within the White House; yet, most of the masses fail to recognize as how their freedoms, one by one, are being taken away. - oyh
by Ken Klukowski
Last week President Obama appointed yet another “czar” with massive government power, answering only to him. Even before this latest appointment, the top-ranking Democrat in the Senate wrote President Obama a letter saying that these czars are unconstitutional. President Obama’s “czar strategy” is an unprecedented power grab centralizing authority in the White House, outside congressional oversight and in violation of the Constitution.
As of last week, Czar Kenneth Feinberg has the authority to set the pay scale for executives at any company receiving government money (and how many aren’t, these days?). Czar Feinberg has the power to say that someone’s pay is excessive, and to make companies cut that pay until the czar is pleased.
Congress did not give Czar Feinberg this authority. For that matter, Congress has not authorized any of the czars that President Barack Obama has created. Over the past thirty years presidents have each had one or two czars for various issues, and once the number went as high as five. But now, by some counts President Obama has created sixteen czars, and there may be more on the way. Each of these has enormous government power, and answers only to the president.
Ever since this practice of appointing czars began years ago, it has always been considered possible that they are all unconstitutional. But it never built to a critical mass to elicit a court fight. These czars were few and far between, and rarely did anything that seriously ruffled any feathers. But President Obama has taken this to an unprecedented level, to the point where these appointments are dangerous to our constitutional regime.
This has become too much for the longest-serving senator in U.S. history to stomach. Democratic Senator Robert Byrd is the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate. Even though Senate rules vest most powers in the Senate majority leader, the president pro tempore is a constitutional officer, and third in line to the U.S. presidency (after the vice president and the Speaker of the House). This office is held by a Democrat, who has been serving in the Senate since before Barack Obama was even born.
Senator Byrd wrote a letter to President Obama in February, criticizing the president’s strategy of creating czars to manage important areas of national policy. Senator Byrd said that these appointments violate both the constitutional system of checks and balances and the constitutional separation of powers, and is a clear attempt to evade congressional oversight. (Didn’t this White House promise unprecedented transparency?)
And Senator Byrd is exactly correct. The Constitution commands that government officers with significant authority (called “principal officers”) are nominated by the president but then are subject to a confirmation vote by the U.S. Senate. And principal officers include not only cabinet-level department heads, but go five levels deep in executive appointments, to include assistant secretaries and deputy undersecretaries.
Inferior officers are appointed either by the president, cabinet-level officers, or the courts. But even then, the Constitution specifies that only Congress can authorize the making of such appointments. For these inferior officers, only Congress can create their offices, and also specify who appoints them. And such officers are still answerable to Congress. They are subject to subpoena to testify before Congress, and Congress holds the power of the purse by making annual appropriations for their division or program.
White House officials, by contrast, cannot be compelled to appear before Congress and testify. They are alter-egos of the president himself, and as an agent of the Executive Office of the President they are entirely removed from Congress, and not answerable to Congress in any way. That was why during the Bush administration White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, Senior Advisor Karl Rove, and Counsel Harriet Miers could not be compelled to testify to Congress when President Bush invoked executive privilege (a battle they may well have won if they pressed their case all the way to the Supreme Court). Senior presidential aides advise the president alone, and the separation of powers forbids congressional interference in that relationship.
But that’s the problem with these czars. The president can have any advisors he wants, people who privately advise him or meet with others on his behalf, but have little or no actual authority to exert government power on anyone. These czars, however, are directly dictating policy, impacting millions of lives in the way that few assistant secretaries or deputy undersecretaries do.
The Founding Fathers specifically wrote the Constitution in a way to deny such absolute power to emanate from one person. That was why they required that no principal officers could exercise any power unless the U.S. Senate decided to confirm them. That was also why they specified that even for inferior officers only Congress could create their positions and could still require them to answer to Congress. The Founding Fathers were specifically blocking the type of centralized power that President Obama is currently exerting.
Fortunately, there is a remedy. Any person on the receiving end of an order from any of these czars has standing to challenge their constitutionality in court. Any person whose pay is deemed excessive by Kenneth Feinberg, or affected by any other czar, could file a federal suit asserting that the order is an unconstitutional exercise of government power, and have a court both invalidate the order and hold that the position itself doesn’t legally exist. Then everyone could just ignore these czars, because they would simply be private citizens, without the authority to order any of us to tie our shoes.
Let the lawsuits begin.
VERY INTERESTING - Give this one some deep thought! - oyh
1... The Garden of Eden was in Iraq
2. Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq, was the cradle of civilization!
3 . Noah built the ark in Iraq
4. The Tower of Babel was in Iraq
5. Abraham was from Ur, which is in Southern Iraq
6. Isaac's wife Rebekah is from Nahor, which is in Iraq
7. Jacob met Rachel in Iraq
8. Jonah preached in Nineveh - which is in Iraq
9... Assyria, which is in Iraq, conquered the ten tribes of Israel
10. Amos cried out in Iraq
11 Babylon, which is in Iraq, destroyed Jerusalem
12. Daniel was in the lion's den in Iraq
13. The three Hebrew children were in the fire in Iraq (Jesus had been in Iraq also as the fourth person in the Fiery Furnace!)
14. Belshazzar, the King of Babylon saw the 'writing on the wall' in Iraq
15. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, carried the Jews captive into Iraq
16. Ezekiel preached in Iraq
17. The wise men were from Iraq
18. Peter preached in Iraq
19. The 'Empire of Man' described in Revelation is called Babylon -- which was a city in Iraq, and you have probably seen this one: Israel is the nation most often mentioned in the Bible.
But do you know which nation is second?
It is Iraq!
However, that is not the name that is used in the Bible..
The names used in the Bible are Babylon , Land of Shinar, and Mesopotamia .... The word Mesopotamia means between the two rivers, more exactly between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers ...
The name Iraq means country with deep roots.
Indeed Iraq is a country with deep roots and is a very significant country in the Bible.
No other nation, except Israel, has more history and prophecy associated with it than Iraq and also, this is something to think about:
Since America is typically represented by an eagle. Saddam should have read up on his Muslim passages.
The following verse is from the Koran, (the Islamic Bible)
Koran ( 9:11) - For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle.. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah;
And there was peace.
(Note the verse number!) Hmmmmmmm?!
This is a ribbon for soldiers fighting in Iraq ..
Pass it on to everyone and pray.
Does Palin Have a Political Future?
NRO on what comes next for the governor.
An NRO Symposium
EDITOR’S NOTE: The all–Michael Jackson news networks switched gears this weekend when Alaska governor Sarah Palin announced that she is not running for reelection but will instead step down from office this month. Does Sarah Palin have a future in politics? Should she? National Review Online surveyed some political observers.
KELLYANNE CONWAY
It may confound old men and spinsters in the media that a mother of five would want to stop the madness and protect her brood from the relentlessand vicious attacks by people who literally don’t know anyone like her, but, at some level, Governor Palin should be taken at her word: She’s had enough.
The advent of the blogosphere means there is not a single unexpressed thought left in America. And one would be challenged to find someone more singularly excoriated by people whose opinions, issued from poison keyboards, matter so little (except perhaps to their cats).
But, as a private citizen, Governor Palin can unbind her hands, quit swallowing hard, and respond. She can also make a boatload of money with a bestseller or two, a spot on the speaking circuit, and a steady media gig. Palin can steep herself in foreign policy, become an advocate for issues that people actually care about — like special-needs children, a cause for which savaging her would be difficult — and help a national Republican party that is in no position to turn away any volunteers, let alone one for whom thousands cheer at events.
Palin has her critics and her patrons, and she surely has earned both admiration and consternation in the past ten months. But the beating she has taken from media and blogosphere snarks is undeserved and a little tired. If she were as irrelevant as they claim, she would not be under attack. If she were as dumb as they hope, her critics wouldn’t need to spend so much time saying so.
Palin has a future in politics or public policy or both — if she wants one. That’s a broader question than the possibility of a presidential run in 2012 or beyond. If she does pursue the presidency, she’ll have to earn it, but her cost of admission to the race should be no greater, and her burden of proof no higher, than those of the other governors — or the one-term senator/community-organizers who have come before her.
— Kellyanne Conway is president of a polling company, WomanTrend, and will soon be a mother of four.
The Islamic Revolution
"I did it for Islam but it wasn't easy to kill people. We have to remember who they are though - they're deceitful people who are against the Islamic Revolution."
A member of Iran's Basij militia feels a rumble of conscience and tries to rationalize it away. "Basij militiaman: 'I hoped it would never come to shooting them'," from France 24, July 3:
The Basij militia has been blamed for extreme brutality in the violent aftermath of the contested June 12 election in Iran. A Basij commander, who volunteers for one of the Tehran branch of the militia, describes his account of one the bloodiest clashes, on June 20.
Iran's Basij militia is a pro-government volunteer force which comes to the aid of the regime when unrest hits the streets. It was established by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 during the Iran-Iraq war. During the last three weeks the Basij has been called upon by the government to quell the post-election protests, in which at least 20 people were reported to have been killed. The opposition says the figure is much higher.
Mehdi (not his real name) is a 39-year-old Basij commander and a former classmate of one of our Observers from Tehran (who prefers not to be mentioned). Mehdi led a mission in the city centre, close to the Tehran military base, on June 20, one of the most violent days of the clashes.
I did shoot at people myself. I am a military man I have to obey my orders. The crowd was attacking us like crazy people; throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. We had to protect ourselves; to show we were serious, and we did warn them, shouting several times, before opening fire. But they continued to attack. I don't remember who I shot, I just tried to shoot at the people's feet.
Later, we moved back and went behind the vans in middle of the street and I ordered my unit to shoot into the ground in the hope of scaring the crowds from coming closer.
I hoped it would never come to shooting them. That night, I had a nightmare in which the protestors threw me on a fire. It's come back several times, and I can see the faces of the people I was ordered to shoot. I've asked a very spiritual mullah to pray for me.
I did it for Islam but it wasn't easy to kill people. We have to remember who they are though - they're deceitful people who are against the Islamic Revolution. You can't expect us to stay calm when they want to overthrow our regime."
"The e-mail Bag"
WOMEN'S REVENGE
"Cash, check or charge?" I asked, after folding items the woman wished to purchase. As she fumbled for her wallet, I noticed a remote control for a television set in her purse.
"So, do you always carry your TV remote?" I asked.
"No," she replied, "but my husband refused to come shopping with me, and I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him legally."
Medical Science?
Dr. Timothy McCarthy while receiving a medical award for creativity, reported his findings to the Fellows of plastic surgery, concluding with this case study: "Several years ago a woman was high on cocaine and marijuana and she rode a horse head-on into a train traveling 80 miles an hour. All I had left to work with was the woman's hair and the horse's ass. I was able to put them together and now she's Speaker of the House.
Now you know the rest of the story. - Just a joke folks! - oyh
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20090707
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
"Daily Motivations"
I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character
of an honest man. -- George Washington
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
"May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." (2 Corinthians 13:14)
Some people make the mistake of depersonalizing the Holy Spirit. They think of Him as some kind of will or force within them, not a He but an It. They confuse Him with the vague generic idea of a conscience. They pick up false ideas from Eastern religions about some small "spark" of God within us. But the Bible is very clear that none of these are accurate descriptions of who the Holy Spirit is and how He relates to us.
God's Spirit is fully a person with all His own individual traits. He speaks, inspires, guides, convicts, comforts, and encourages. He can be lied to and grieved. All these traits are functions of personality. Jesus always referred to Him in that light. He used the personal pronouns He and Him, but never the impersonal pronoun it. When He spoke to His disciples in the upper room about the Holy Spirit, He used the Greek word paracletos meaning called to one's side. That name tells us that the Holy Spirit has the ability to give aid and to comfort or console.
God's Spirit is a unique member of the Trinity. As you come to learn more about His work in your life, you will be more aware of His presence and power. You will come to recognize His gentle voice, welcoming His comfort and basking in His encouragement. He will come to be like a perfect friend. You will have an awareness of His personality and presence everywhere you go.
"The Patriot Post"
"As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight." -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
RE: THE LEFT
"'Saved or created' has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs. His latest invocation came [last week], when the president declared that the stimulus had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs -- and announced he was ramping up some of the stimulus spending so he could 'save or create' an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will 'save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years.' ... In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1..6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and -- presto! -- you have the president claiming he has 'saved or created' 150,000 jobs. It all makes for a much nicer spin, and helps you forget this is the same team that only a few months ago promised us that passing the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising over 8%. ... Now, something's wrong when the president invokes a formula that makes it impossible for him to be wrong and it goes largely unchallenged. It's true that almost any government spending will create some jobs and save others. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, that doesn't tell you much: The government, after all, can create jobs by hiring people to dig holes and fill them in. If the 'saved or created' formula looks brilliant, it's only because Mr. Obama and his team are not being called on their claims." -- columnist William McGurn
POLITICAL FUTURES
"At issue is whether America will continue to have a largely free-market-oriented health-care system or a government-run system where politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., make the most fundamental decisions about how we enter life, how we leave it and how we are cared for when we are ill. If Obama prevails, people who have so little respect for human life and private property that they approve of tax-funded abortion and tax-funded killing of human embryos will be empowered to decide who gets what tax-funded medical care and when. Our health care will belong to the government just as surely as General Motors does. ... If Obama and congressional liberals have their way, two of the three elements of a fully socialized health care system will be locked into law before Thanksgiving. The government will own a health-insurance company, and the government will require you to buy health insurance. The only thing Obama and congressional liberals won't formally require -- this year -- is that you buy your government-mandated insurance from the government-owned company. ... Socialized medicine must be stopped this summer -- or not at all." -- columnist Terence Jeffrey
THE LAST WORD
"What do Obama and God have in common? Neither has a birth certificate. How do they differ? God does not think he's Obama. And there's another difference between God and Obama, and that is that liberals love Obama. We have some more differences for you here between President Obama and God. God asks for only 10 percent of your money. God gives you freedom to live your life as you choose. God's plan to save us is actually written down for people to read." -- radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh
"Sunlight Foundation"
It's time for action, friends.
We (finally) have a bill introduced in the House of Representatives that will require legislation to be made public 72 hours before it is considered by Congress. Now we need to make sure it passes.
Right now, Congress doesn't actually read the legislation they vote on, and just as bad, we don't have the time to make our voice heard before a new law affects our lives. The status quo is wholly unacceptable, and now we have a way to start changing it.
http://www.readthebill.org
By introducing House Resolution 554, the bipartisan sponsors Reps. Baird (D-WA) and Culberson (R-TX) have taken us one step closer toward greater transparency, and given us a chance to improve the dialogue between members of Congress and the people who elected them. But H.R. 554 has a long way to go before this straightforward fix becomes law.
For starters, it needs a lot more support in Congress. We've made it easy for you sign our petition and call your representative to ask him or her to co-sponsor the bill. It's simple and important. Our goal is to deliver 15,000 signatures of support for the bill before Congress recesses in August.
Take a moment to sign, call and share the petition with others. It's a small action we can each take to raise awareness of how mind-numbingly absurd it is that Congress doesn't read its legislation, and ultimately make Congress more accountable to us.
http://www.readthebill.org
This is beyond a small procedural change, friends. There are many reasons having 72 hours of public notice prior to Congress's consideration of a bill is important, and here are a couple examples we found:
Most citizens would have supported amending the economic stimulus bill to remove the provision allowing AIG executives to receive retroactive bonuses - if only they had known.
The average person probably would have preferred to let the judicial system work rather than have Congress give immunity from lawsuits to telecommunications companies that participated in a controversial wiretapping scheme.
Workers hoping to retire on their 401(k) investments might have liked to have some serious analysis of whether credit default swaps ought to be regulated. We know how that worked out. And, just about everyone benefits from mandating time to check for questionable and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.
In these cases (and many others), only a handful of congressional staffers and possibly a few well-connected lobbyists knew exactly what was in the bills that, in turn, cost taxpayers billions of dollars, protected industry giants and wreaked havoc on our economy.
No one else - not most members of Congress, the media, interest groups or the public - had time to read the bills, analyze the ramifications and fix the problems before Congress made their decisions. Time for that to change.
Thousands of you have already signed the petition, and we hope you'll now help us get new signatures and make the calls necessary to have
the kind of impact we need.
Time for Congress to Read their Bills.
Jake Brewer
Engagement Director, Sunlight Foundation
"ACRU"
Robert Knight: Hate Crimes Bill Would Federalize Criminal Law, Revive Double Jeopardy
This column originally appeared on Townhall.com on June 30, 2009.
http://www.theacru.org/acru/robert_knight_hate_crimes_bill_would_federalize_criminal_law_revive_double_jeopardy/
Among its many defects, the proposed federal hate crimes bill virtually ensures that some defendants will face double jeopardy, whatever the outcome of their cases. It all depends on the whims of the folks occupying the Attorney General’s office, who may want to score political points at a defendant’s expense.
The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 909) now before the Senate, establishes "thought crime," violates equal protection by making some victims more important than others, elevates "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to be equivalent to civil rights categories like race, and greatly expands the federal role in criminal law.
In short, it's a grab bag of ways to violate genuine constitutional rights while addressing a non-issue. There is no compelling evidence that bias-motivated crimes are not being handled properly and perpetrators punished.
One of the bill's more dangerous features is its boldly stated authorization for the feds to intervene in any case they determine has not met "the federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence." Under current law, the feds can narrowly invoke their authority in cases where a "hate crime" has prevented someone from engaging in federally protected activities such as voting. The new law opens wide the door for the feds to barge in.
Gail Heriot, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, was one of two (out of six) witnesses testifying against the bill on June 25 before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She laid out precisely how the law could be abused, and concluded:
No one can deny the horror of violent crimes inspired by hatred of any kind. This is something upon which all decent people can agree. But it is precisely in those situations–where all decent people agree on the need to 'do something'–that mistakes are made. Passage of the vaguely-worded prohibitions in S. 909 would be a giant step toward the federalization of all crime. Given the many civil liberties issues that would raise, including the routine potential of double jeopardy prosecutions, this is a step that members of the Senate should think twice before they take.
In addition, the bill's wording guarantees future interpretive mischief, Heriot notes:
Back in 1998, attorneys at the Department of Justice, eager to expand federal authority, drafted language for the bill that would create federal jurisdiction over many cases that can't honestly be regarded as hate crimes–at least not as that term is understood by most Americans. The fact is that, despite the misleading use of the words "hate crime," [the bill] does not actually require that the defendant be inspired by hatred in order to convict. It is sufficient if he acts 'because of' someone's actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. Consider:
*Rapists are seldom indifferent to the gender of their victims. They are always chosen 'because of' their gender.
*A thief might well steal only from the disabled because, in general, they are less able to defend themselves. Literally, they're chosen 'because of' their disability.
* Suppose a burglar is surprised when the husband and wife who reside in the home return earlier than expected. The burglar shoots the husband and kills him, but finding himself unable to shoot a woman, turns and runs. Again, literally, the husband was killed ‘because of’ his gender.
The House version of the bill passed in April. President Obama said he wants to sign it before the August recess.
This bill is a grave threat to America's legal heritage of judging actions rather than thoughts or beliefs, and it will politicize law enforcement. Beyond the unfairness of excluding some groups, such as the elderly, the homeless, veterans and children, the proposed law advances an underlying, ambitious agenda to punish individuals and groups that hold traditional values.
During the Supreme Court hearings on the Boy Scouts case (Boy Scouts of America vs. Dale, 2000), the Rev. Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council was sitting next to the White House liaison on gay and lesbian issues. Thinking he was of like mind, she whispered to him: "We’re not going to win this case, but that’s okay. Once we get 'hate crime' laws on the books, we’re going to go after the Scouts and all the other bigots."
Why would she say that? Could it be that the bill will lay the foundation for suppressing groups with traditional values?
S. 909 adds "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to a list of specially protected classes such as race, ethnicity, sex and religion. Congress would thus create newly minted "civil rights" based on sexual vagaries. Like "sexual orientation," "gender identity" is fluid, and it includes transvestitism (cross-dressing) and transsexualism. It is notable that former homosexuals, or "ex-gays," perhaps the most victimized group based on "sexual orientation" perceptions, have not been mentioned as being covered by this bill. In the House, even an amendment to exclude "pedophilia" was defeated.
The law essentially criminalizes views or beliefs. Defendants' speech, writing, reading materials and organizational memberships would become key evidence to establish a "hate crime."
Some language was inserted to assuage free speech and liberty concerns, but American Civil Rights Union Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski observes: "It's only a statement of the obvious, so it has no legal effect. No statute can abridge constitutionally-protected speech. If any speech is burdened, and the speaker files suit, then the process and the result is the same ... [This] is just there to help pass the bill by giving people a talking point to say 'this law does nothing to violate anyone's free speech rights.' It makes no difference in court whatsoever."
The tendency to equate conservative views with "extremism" was on display earlier this year when a revealing memo surfaced at the Department of Homeland Security and for which Secretary Janet Napolitano was forced to apologize. The memo, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," listed as candidates for "violent radicalization" such Americans as returning veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, people who oppose illegal immigration and gun control, and those who warn of losing American sovereignty to globalism. This characterization of millions of Americans as security threats should give everyone pause about passing laws that redefine legal protection based on group status.
The bill also represents yet another abuse of the Constitution's Commerce Clause, using it to justify federal intervention upon the flimsiest tie-ins to interstate trade.
In 2007, America had more than 11 million incidents of violence or property crime, of which 7,624 incidents were classified as "hate crimes." Not exactly an epidemic of "hate" in a nation of more than 300 million.
The proposed law will politicize crime, leading to pressure on police and prosecutors to devote more of their limited resources to some victims over others. If you doubt this, consider the tsunami of media accompanying the Matthew Shepard case in Wyoming in 1998, while the murder of Kristen Lamb, an eight-year-old girl, a month before was virtually ignored.
Hate crime laws lay the groundwork for assaults on freedom of speech and freedom of religion. We can look to our northern neighbor for clues about what happens when such laws are enacted. In Saskatchewan, Canada, a newspaper publisher and a man who placed a newspaper ad faced jail and were fined $4,500 each, merely for running an ad containing references to several Bible verses regarding homosexuality. A college teacher who wrote a letter to the editor affirming traditional morality was suspended. And best-selling author Mark Steyn (America Alone), has faced charges in national and provincial tribunals for the supposed "hate crime" of reporting what Muslim leaders in Europe themselves say about changing demographics.
The Senate should think long and hard before saddling Americans with this kind of dangerous nonsense.
"II Chron. 7:14"
By Pat Grant
AFTER A DAY OF CONTEMPLATION AND SOUL SEARCHING, I HAVE DECIDED TO REACH OUT TO MY FRIENDS AND RELATIVES AND ASK YOU TO DO SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN TROUBLING ME FOR A LONG TIME.
OUR NATION IS/HAS BEEN ON THE SLIPPERY SLOPE TO HELL FOR A LONG TIME. IF YOU LOOK AROUND YOU WILL FIND CORRUPTION, GREED, MORAL DECAY AND A STEADY MOVE AWAY FROM THE THINGS THAT MADE US GREAT. THE PRINCIPLES UPON WHICH THIS NATION WAS FOUNDED ARE NO LONGER OUR
BACKBONE. HOWEVER, WE CAN REVERSE THIS TREND.
IN GOD'S WORD HE STATES,"IF MY PEOPLE WHO ARE CALLED BY MY NAME WILL HUMBLE THEMSELVES, AND PRAY AND SEEK MY FACE, AND TURN FROM THEIR WICKED WAYS, THEN I WILL HEAR FROM HEAVEN, AND WILL FORGIVE THEIR SIN AND HEAL THEIR LAND."
I AM CONVINCED THAT WE MUST PRAY FOR OUR NATION AND ITS LEADERS AND ASK FOR FORGIVENESS. SO I ASK YOU TO JOIN ME IN THIS PLEA TO OUR LORD.
WOULD YOU PLEASE SEND THIS TO AT LEAST 25 PEOPLE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK, (SEND IT TO ALL OF THEM). ASK THEM TO PRAY EVERYDAY. 25 TO THE 5TH POWER IS 9,765,625 PEOPLE. IMAGINE IF EACH PERSON REACHES TEN OTHERS.
IF YOU DO AND THEY COMPLY, WE WILL LIFT UP MILLIONS OF PRAYERS A DAY TO OUR CREATOR. HE WILL HEAR US AND IN FAITH WILL ANSWER.
Let me just add a quote from Ronald Reagan - "If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under." I truly believe this is why the United States of America is in the shape we are in today. Most people have forgotten that we are ONE NATION UNDER GOD! Let us as Christians stand up and remind people of this. ~ Have a Blessed Day!
"The Web"
10 Roses For You
http://www.authorstream..com/presentation/vkaisthaaseem-77173-10-roses-vanshaj-amogh-entertainment-ppt-powerpoint/
Obama. the Radical Son
Rick Moran
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/07/obama_the_radical_son.html
A shocking article written by a young Barack Obama while he was at Columbia sheds some light on the president's real attitudes toward the United States and our system of "economic injustice."
Andy McCarthy of NRO's The Corner has the story that should have been front page news a year ago:
During the campaign, I wrote a piece called "Why Won't Obama Talk About Columbia? - The years he won't discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about." So now, nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign - other than in Wasilla - and whaddya know? The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, "Breaking the War Mentality," that Columbia student Barack Obama wrote for a campus newspaper. The article shows that Obama dreaded American "militarism" and its "military-industrial interests," while effusing enthusiasm for the dangerously delusional nuclear-freeze movement.
Moreover, while indicating a preference for the political wisdom of reggae singer Peter Tosh over Ronald Reagan or Scoop Jackson, Obama bewailed the "narrow focus" of anti-militarism activists, worrying that they were targeting the "symptoms" rather than the real "disease," namely, America's underlying economic and political injustice.
Some of the things Obama wrote in this March 10, 1983 article or so out of the mainstream of even today's far left Democratic party that it is clear we have a radical leftist on his way to Moscow to negotiate our nuclear arsenal while threatening to bypass the senate altogether in order to make it stick.
Here is the president of the United States as a student at Columbia:
Generally, the narrow focus of the [Nuclear] Freeze movement as well as academic discussions of first versus second strike capabilities, suit the military-industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion dollar erector sets. When Peter Tosh sings that "everybody's asking for peace, but nobody's asking for justice," one is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem instead of the disease itself.
And that "disease" is American "militarism" and "economic injustice." Here's our president writing what McCarthy aptly calls "leftist gobbldygook:"
Indeed, the most pervasive malady of the collegiate system specifically, and the American experience generally, is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy. What the members of ARA and SAM try to do is infuse what they have learned about the current situation, bring the words of that formidable roster on the face of Butler Library, names like Thoreau, Jefferson, and Whitman, to bear on the twisted logic of which we are today a part. By adding their energy and effort in order to enhance the possibility of a decent world, they may help deprive us of a spectacular experience -that of war; But then, there are some things we shouldn't have to live through in order to want to avoid the experience.
Is it possible that Obama moderated his views over the years and is now just a good old fashioned Democrat rather than a far left radical loon who quotes a reggae singer to make his case against the military?
I will allow that as we get older, we are not quite as sure of ourselves as we were in our youth. But I think Obama's policies bear out the idea that he despises capitalism, is distrustful of our military, and still harbors extraordinarily naive views of how the world works and America's role in it.
Absolutely remarkable that this article is just emerging now. If anything proved that the press failed to do its traditional job of vetting candidates for the presidency it is the discovery of this article which no doubt will be suppressed to some extent. Not so much to protect Obama but to hide the fact that journalists failed to do their job before the election.
HOW TO CATCH WILD PIGS
There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist government. In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question.
He asked, ‘ Do you know how to catch wild pigs?’ The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. ‘You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how To forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.
The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms- just a little at a time.
One should always remember ‘There is no such thing as a free Lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.
I just don’t know how some people don’t get this..
Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government 'help' is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life then you will probably delete this email, but God help you when the gate slams shut!
Keep your eyes on the newly elected politicians who are about to slam the gate on America ..
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have" -- Thomas Jefferson
Global Warming Overshadowed: Media Give Massive Cap-and-Trade Tax Second Billing
Suppression of science and narrow passage of climate change legislation take back seat to celebrity deaths and health care.
By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20090701131617.aspx
The news cycle has been dominated by celebrity deaths – Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and even TV pitchman Billy Mays – and President Barack Obama’s health care initiative. Obama has used the compliant media to keep the focus to health care, and they are neglecting a critical largest news event that could impact the lives of every man, woman and child for the foreseeable future.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a 1,200-page climate change bill known as the “American Clean Energy and Security Act” sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. and Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., by a narrow 219-212 vote on June 26.
Prospects for that piece of environmental legislation might have been hurt had journalists reported the scientific censorship taking place in the Obama administration. A veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency strongly questioned the theory of manmade global warming in a report that was then silenced by the administration. That’s exactly the opposite of how many journalists handled a similar controversy during the Bush administration.
The news blackout helped the new bill, which has been referred to as the “cap-and-tax bill” by opponents, who point out the massive tax increase that the American public will be burdened with as a result. So contentious is the bill that it inspired the likes of liberal bomb-thrower and columnist Paul Krugman to accuse those same opponents of treason in the op-ed pages of The New York Times.
But Krugman at least acknowledged the bill’s existence. Few others in the mainstream media have. Climate change has been a pet issue the past several years for the media, so their silence is strange.
A Double Standard: EPA Skeptic Suppressed – Ignored by All, but Fox News
Throughout the latter half of George W. Bush’s presidency, some in the media were quick to cry foul when accusations surfaced science was being silenced in the name of politics, especially in the case of NASA climate expert James Hansen.
But fast-forward to June 2009 and the early stages of the Barack Obama presidency. The cap-and-trade bill just passed the House and was on its way to the Senate when a 38-year EPA veteran, Senior Operations Research Analyst Alan Carlin, came forward and said his 98-page study that questioned the theory of anthropogenic global warming had been quashed by the administration.
Carlin appeared on the Fox News Channel’s June 30 “Fox & Friends” and told of how his report was dismissed by the EPA because his “comments do not help the legal policy or case.” Those revelations caused Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., to call for a congressional inquiry.
“He came out with the truth,” Inhofe said to Fox News on June 29. “They don’t want the truth at the EPA. We’re going to expose it."
Nonetheless, Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network have been virtually alone in covering the story – in sharp contrast to similar revelations from the opposite side of the issue during the Bush Administration. A scientist was allegedly censored because his findings went against the politics of the administration in power. That got top billing by some media outlets.
“The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming,” Andrew Revkin wrote for the front page of the January 29, 2006 issue of The New York Times. “The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.”
That article sparked coverage from other mainstream media outlets, eager to show there was an effort by the Bush administration to silence Hansen. CBS “60 Minutes” contributor and regular global warming alarmist Scott Pelley reported that Hansen faced trouble by appearing on his program.
“As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk,” Pelley said on the March 19, 2006 “60 Minutes.” “He says there are things the White House doesn’t want you to hear, but he’s going to say them anyway. Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He’s the head of NASA’s top institute studying the climate. But, as we first reported last spring, this eminent scientist says the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science. Well, there’ll be none of that tonight because James Hansen is telling what he knows on ‘60 Minutes.’”
Hansen parlayed the fame he gained from dozens of news interviews into a book called “Censoring Science: Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming.”
Political Realities Ignored: Narrow House Passage Means Likely End of the Road
When the Waxman-Markey bill passed in the House on June 26 by a mere seven-vote margin, even with harsh criticism from House Minority Leader John Boehner, it was celebrated as a win by some in the global warming alarmist movement. Steve Bouchard, campaign manager of former Vice President Al Gore chalked the vote up as a victory.
“Today, we have something to celebrate,” Bouchard wrote in an e-mail sent out immediately after the House vote on June 26. “For the first time in decades, we have taken bold action to help solve the climate crisis. I look forward to working with you in the days ahead.”
The coverage on the networks wasn’t as “celebratory,” although he bill was commonly hailed as “sweeping.”
“In Washington, the House last night narrowly passed a sweeping climate change bill,” “NBC Nightly News” weekend anchor Lester Holt said on his June 27 broadcast. “President Obama says it’s a bold and necessary step to fight global warming and encourage a new era of green energy. Critics, however, say the new cap and trade system to limit greenhouse gases will lead to higher energy costs.”
On the June 27 broadcast of ABC’s “World News,” David Muir said “Back in Washington tonight, President Obama is now urging the Senate to pass the most sweeping bill ever to address global warming. It was a squeaker in the House last night. And it might be an even tougher sale in the Senate.”
This was a significant understatement. Immediately following the House vote on June 26, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., issued his own statement.
“Today’s razor thin vote in the House spells doom in the Senate,” Inhofe said. “Despite a large Democratic majority in the House, and the fact that this is one of the President’s top priorities, the Democratic leadership was forced to do everything possible to get a bill passed. Their slim victory could come at a high price – this is the BTU tax all over again.”
And so far, Inhofe’s analogy about the BTU tax has proven valid. Keith Hennessey, a senior White House economic advisor to President George W. Bush, recently recounted the events that an unfolded around the 1993 BTU tax vote on his Web site. Hennessey explained the BTU tax bill narrowly passed in the House, but was dead on arrival in the Senate – and both houses of Congress were Democrat-controlled at the time.
Inhofe has consistently conveyed that message over the past few months as the Waxman-Markey bill has been debated – it won’t pass regardless of the Democrat’s best efforts.
It could be that the mainstream media understands this and has determined not to waste time on a story with a dead end. It’s otherwise difficult to believe that a major piece of legislation of this nature wouldn’t garner significant media coverage. According to The Heritage Foundation, gas and energy prices would spike, costing American families an additional $3,000 per year. Jobs would be lost and the prices of goods would jump – all in exchange for little impact on the environment.
However, as a June 29 Business & Media Institute analysis of USA Today pointed out, the death of pop singer Michael Jackson received massive coverage for three straight days. Waxman-Markey was nowhere to be found.
3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate—
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911
Contact Information:
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
Office of Communication
119 National Center
Reston, VA 20192
Read FAQs about the Bakken Formation.
Listen to a podcast with the lead scientist on this topic.
Reston, VA - North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.
A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151million barrels of oil.
Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources.
New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger technically recoverable oil volumes. About 105 million barrels of oil were produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007.
The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000.
The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A "continuous" oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest "continuous" oil accumulation in the U.S. is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1.0 billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil.
"It is clear that the Bakken formation contains a significant amount of oil - the question is how much of that oil is recoverable using today's technology?" said Senator Byron Dorgan, of North Dakota. "To get an answer to this important question, I requested that the U.S. Geological Survey complete this study, which will provide an up-to-date estimate on the amount of technically recoverable oil resources in the Bakken Shale formation."
The USGS estimate of 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil has a mean value of 3.65 billion barrels. Scientists conducted detailed studies in stratigraphy and structural geology and the modeling of petroleum geochemistry. They also combined their findings with historical exploration and production analyses to determine the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil estimates.
USGS worked with the North Dakota Geological Survey, a number of petroleum industry companies and independents, universities and other experts to develop a geological understanding of the Bakken Formation. These groups provided critical information and feedback on geological and engineering concepts important to building the geologic and production models used in the assessment.
Five continuous assessment units (AU) were identified and assessed in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana - the Elm Coulee-Billings Nose AU, the Central Basin-Poplar Dome AU, the Nesson-Little Knife Structural AU, the Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and the Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU.
At the time of the assessment, a limited number of wells have produced oil from three of the assessments units in Central Basin-Poplar Dome, Eastern Expulsion Threshold, and Northwest Expulsion Threshold.
The Elm Coulee oil field in Montana, discovered in 2000, has produced about 65 million barrels of the 105 million barrels of oil recovered from the Bakken Formation.
Results of the assessment can be found at http://energy.usgs.gov.
Palin Attorney Warns Media on Defamation
Monday, July 6, 2009 2:17 PM
By: Rick Pedraza
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s attorney, Thomas Van Flein, issued a four-page warning to mainstream news organizations over the weekend that he will sue on behalf of his client if “defamatory material” relating to her or her family finds its way from Internet blogs to print.
In the statement released Saturday, Van Flein noted there will be severe consequences to those organizations that print stories accusing the governor of embezzling funds in the construction of a sports arena in Wasilla, Alaska. The FBI today released a statement saying Palin is not under investigation, Politico reports.
“We are not investigating her," FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez said Sunday. "Normally we don't confirm or deny those kinds of allegations out there, but by not doing so it just casts her in a very bad light. There is just no truth to those rumors out there in the blogosphere."
Palin's personal spokeswoman, Meg Stapleton, sent the statement from Van Flein attacking "false and defamatory allegations that the 'real' reasons for Governor Palin's resignation stem from an alleged criminal investigation pertaining to the construction of the Wasilla Sports Complex,” the Anchorage Daily News reports.
Radio talk show host and blogger Shannyn Moore, who Van Flein called out personally for defaming Palin, followed that up by holding a press conference of her own in Anchorage yesterday to respond to Palin’s attorney’s claims.
Moore went on national television Friday, the day Palin said she would resign, and mentioned the rumor to MSNBC's David Shuster.
"There is a scandal rumor here that there is a criminal investigation into some activities and that's been rumored for about, I don't know, probably six weeks or two months," Moore told Shuster, noting Palin appeared nervous as she announced her resignation.
“I think she [Palin] was actually doing damage control for news that's coming up later," Moore said in explaining Palin’s abrupt resignation after serving just two-and-a-half years of a four-year term in office.
"I can say definitively I am aware of no criminal investigation whatsoever involving Sarah Palin. Zero," Van Flein said.
"The Palins used a combination of personal savings, equity from the sale of their private home, and conventional bank financing to build the house, like millions of American families," Van Flein wrote in reference to the Lake Lucille family home Palin’s husband Todd built as general contractor.
Van Fleini said Todd "is no stranger to construction. We will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation."
In response to the defamation allegation, Moore said: "I haven't defamed the governor; I reported on speculation and rumor in Alaska. It's not my rumor; it's been out there for 10 months and the First Amendment protects me. Even if I didn't say it's 'rumors and speculation,' I'm still protected –– I would just lose credibility, which I'm not willing to do."
Moore called Palin "a coward and a bully" and said she only pointed out that rumors existed about Palin’s finances but never claimed them to be fact.
"What kind of politician attacks an ordinary American on the Fourth of July for speaking her mind?” Moore said. “What's wrong with her? The first amendment was designed to protect people like me from people like her. Our American revolution got rid of kings. And it got rid of queens, as well. Am I annoyed? You betcha. Shannyn Moore will not be muzzled.”
Sarah Palin story sparks Republican family feud
By JONATHAN MARTIN
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24392.html#ixzz0K9CNPxPH&D
A hard-hitting piece on Sarah Palin in the new Vanity Fair
has touched off a blistering exchange of insults among high-profile Republicans over last year’s GOP ticket – tearing open fresh wounds about leaks surrounding Palin and revealing for the first time some of the internal wars that paralyzed the campaign in its final days.
Rival factions close to the McCain campaign have been feuding since last fall over Palin, usually waging the battle in the shadows with anonymous quotes. Now, however, some of the most well-known names in Republican politics are going on-the-record with personal attacks and blame-casting.
William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard and at times an informal adviser to Sen. John McCain, touched off the latest back-and-forth Tuesday morning with a post on his magazine’s blog criticizing the Todd Purdum-authored Palin story and pointing a finger at Steve Schmidt, McCain’s campaign manager.
Kristol cited a passage in Purdum’s piece in which “some top aides” were said to worry about the Alaska governor’s “mental state” and the prospect that the Alaska governor may be suffering from post-partum depression following the birth of her son Trig. “In fact, one aide who raised this possibility in the course of trashing Palin’s mental state to others in the McCain-Palin campaign was Steve Schmidt,” Kristol wrote.
Asked about the accusation, Schmidt fired back in an e-mail: “I'm sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”
“After all, his management of [former Vice President] Dan Quayle’s public image as his chief of staff is still something that takes your breath away,” Schmidt continued. “His attack on me is categorically false.”
Asked directly in a telephone interview if he brought up the prospect of Palin suffering from post-partum depression, Schmidt said: “His allegation that I was defaming Palin by alleging post-partum depression at the campaign headquarters is categorically untrue. In fact, I think it rises to the level of a slander because it’s about the worst thing you can say about somebody who does what I do for a living.”
But Kristol’s charge was seconded by Randy Scheunemann, a longtime foreign policy adviser to McCain who is also close to the Standard editor and was thought to be a Palin ally within the campaign.
“Steve Schmidt has a congenital aversion to the truth,” Scheunemann said. “On two separate and distinct occasions, he speculated about about Governor Palin having post-partum depression, and on the second he threatened that if more negative publicity about the handling of Governor Palin emerged that he would leak his speculation [about post-partum depression] to the press. It was like meeting Tony Soprano.”
Schmidt said Scheunemann’s charges were “categorically untrue.”
“It is inappropriate for me to discuss personnel issues from the campaign,” Schmidt continued. “But suffice it to say Randy is saying these things not because they’re true but because he wants to damage my reputation because of consequences he faced for actions he took.”
Schmidt is alluding, without saying so directly, to the stories that emerged after the campaign that Scheunemann had been fired.
Scheunemann said Schmidt did try to fire him but added: “I’ve got a pay stub through November 15th.”
The questions about Scheunemann being terminated are central to the larger battle about who was trashing Palin, something that quickly came to the surface in the back and forth between Schmidt and Kristol on Tuesday.
The vitriol also suggests the degree to which Palin remains a Rorschach test not simply to Republicans nationally but within a tight circle of elite operatives and commentators, many of whom seem ready to carry their arguments in 2012. Was Palin a fresh talent whose debut was mishandled by self-serving campaign insiders, or an eccentric “diva” who had no business on the national stage? Going forward, does she offer a conservative and charismatic face for a demoralized and star-less party? Or is she a loose cannon who should be consigned to the tabloids where she can reside in perpetuity with other flash-in-the-pan sensations?
Schmidt, who has returned to his California-based political and public affairs consulting business, said that he “worked incredibly hard during the campaign to defend Sarah Palin and her family against a lot of attacks that I thought then and think today were very unfair.”
And he got in a dig at Kristol, who frequently offered unvarnished assessments of McCain’s campaign from his perch at the Standard, on Fox News, where he is a contributor, and in his then-New York Times column.
“Bill Kristol, going back to the time of the campaign, has taken a lot of cheap shots at the campaign without ever offering a plausible path to victory,” Schmidt said. “He’s in the business of ad hominem insults and criticism.”
Responding to Schmidt’s counterattack, Kristol directly fingered Schmidt: “It’s simply a fact that when the going got tough, Steve Schmidt trashed Sarah Palin, both within the campaign and (on background) to journalists. This was after Steve took credit for the Palin pick when, at first, he thought it made him look good. John McCain deserved better.”
At this, Schmidt unloaded in a lengthy telephone interview, suggesting that Kristol was carrying out a personal vendetta based out of anger over the attempt to fire Scheunemann in the final days of the campaign.
In doing so, Schmidt revealed what has been whispered about for months following the campaign: that he and another top aide had ordered a leak hunt in the campaign’s internal e-mail system.
“What this is about is a personal issue that happened late in the campaign relating to a close, personal friend of Bill Kristol and people at The Weekly Standard,” Schmidt said, refusing to use Scheunemann’s name.
“At the end of the campaign there were a series of leaks that were so damaging that it was consuming the 24-hour cable news cycle. Leaks to reporters where Sarah Palin was called all manner of names. [McCain senior adviser] Rick Davis and I jointly felt that was outrageous. So we made an attempt for the first time in the campaign to try to ID who was leaking information that was so damaging and demoralizing to a campaign that was in very difficult circumstances,” Schmidt said, noting that an IT professional executed a system-wide search by keyword.
“What was discovered was an e-mail from a very senior staff member to Bill Kristol that then entered into the news current and continued the negative in-fighting stories for an additional news cycles. I recommended tough medicine for that individual that was carried out,” Schmidt said, again referring to Scheunemann. “Bill Kristol might not have liked that decision, and he might be mad about what happened to his friend, but going all the way back he has been a part of this story and I’ve preserved his confidentiality in that until now. But his use of his public forums to take a personal fight and make character attacks is just simply dishonest and wrong.”
Scheunemann, confirming that his e-mail had been searched, accused Schmidt of “acting in a manner of Iranian secret police” in going to his account.
The foreign policy hand said what was discovered was a message from Kristol inquiring who was the source in the campaign of the “diva” leak, the now-famous complaint from a senior McCain campaign official to CNN’s Dana Bash that Palin was acting like a spoiled and selfish celebrity.
Schmidt suggested that Scheunemann had fingered Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain adviser who helped work with Palin, to Kristol in the message.
“It led to a whole another round of speculation, including Fred Barnes the next night attacking Nicolle Wallace on the air,” Schmidt said, suggesting without saying directly that was why an effort was made to terminate Scheunemann. Barnes, another Weekly Standard editor and Fox News contributor, accused Wallace on Fox News in late October of being “a coward” for running up tens of thousands of dollars in high-end clothes for Palin and then letting the governor take the blame for the purchases. After Wallace denied she had purchased the clothes, Barnes apologized on the air the following night.
But Scheunemann said the clothes controversy was an entirely separate issue and one which he made no mention of in his e-mail to Kristol.
Asked directly if he accused Nicolle Wallace of being the source behind the “diva” leak in his message to Kristol, Scheunemann said: “My e-mail did not accuse Nicolle Wallace. It said something very disparaging about Nicolle but it did not accuse her of being the leak.”
A source familiar with the contents of the e-mail said that Scheunemann actually accused Nicolle Wallace’s husband, Mark Wallace, of being the source of the leak.
When Kristol questioned the likelihood of a male like Mark Wallace using such a gossipy term as diva, this source said, Scheunemann wrote back that Mark Wallace knows something about divas because he’s married to a diva.
Asked about the e-mail, Nicolle Wallace said: “I did not have any knowledge of this. This is all news to me.”
As for being called a “diva,” Wallace laughed for a few seconds.
“I don’t have anything to say on that,” she said.
Mark Wallace, taking the phone from his wife, also laughed about the diva accusation but wouldn’t respond when asked whether he had been the source of the “diva” leak. He explained that he had followed a "zero talk policy with the press" regarding the campaign and wanted to honor that.
But, after an early version of this story was posted on-line, he made an exception and offered a flat denial: "No, never. I don't think Sarah Palin is a diva."
The leak-hunting, Scheunemann said, began after POLITICO’s Ben Smith wrote a story in late October suggesting that Palin had ”gone rogue” and began ignoring the advice of her campaign handlers.
“So after that, they went nuclear with ‘diva’ the next day,” Scheunemann said, referring to the Palin-bashing done to CNN’s Bash the day after the POLITICO story. “But did anybody search Mark or Nicolle Wallace’s e-mails for leaks to Dana Bash?”
Schmidt said Kristol was driven by a personal vendetta over the attempted termination of his decades-long friend, Scheunemann.
“Nonsense,” Kristol replied. “My post today was (self-evidently) triggered by the Todd Purdum article that appeared today, which had Schmidt’s fingerprints all over it. I hadn’t thought about Schmidt in months, and will be happy now to return to more pressing issues, like the presidency of Barack Obama.”
As for the charges of being a sunshine soldier with regard to Palin, Schmidt said: “Nonsense. I’m a team player. That’s a reflection of [Kristol’s] values. He’s the Washington, D.C., talking head and glitterati. I live in Northern California and I really don’t give a s--- about that stuff.”
The nasty back-and-forth between the two well-known Republicans and re-litigating of internal backbiting underscores the degree to which the internecine and very personal battle over last fall’s ticket between those seen as Palin allies and Palin detractors still rages on nearly six months into President Obama’s term.
And it comes as Palin struggles to find her footing, at times appearing to want to take a strictly Alaska-first approach, but then re-emerging on the national stage – something chronicled in the nearly 10,000-word Vanity Fair article.
Loyalists to Palin, including Kristol, were outraged at Purdum’s piece, believing it to be another example of what they see as elite media contempt for the Wasilla native.
In his post, Kristol also criticized Purdum for writing that several Alaskans had told him during the reporting of the piece that they had checked the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” and found it fit their governor.
“Is there any real chance that ‘several’ Alaskans independently told Purdum that they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?” Kristol wrote. “I don’t believe it for a moment. I’ve (for better or worse) moved in pretty well-educated circles in my life, and I’ve gone decades without ‘several’ people telling me they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”
In response, Purdum, a Princeton graduate, wrote of his Harvard-degreed critic: “I'm not nearly as well-educated as Bill, but the great Irving Berlin taught me that ‘you don't have to go to a private school not to pick up a penny near a stubborn mule.’ In the age of Google, I'm confident that plenty of Alaskans know more about finding medical reference works – and all sorts of other knowledge – than Bill thinks they do.
Do you get the feeling Americans are not happy with the new administration?
Let's "hope" it (administration) will "change".........
http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?t=206637
ONE SIGN SAYS: "Limit politicians to two terms........ one in office, one in jail!!" LOL!
Right in Obama's back yard!! I'm more proud of the folks in the windy city, than I thought was ever possible! By the way, I didn't see the ABC CBS NBC CNN MSNBC covering this - did you? Wonder why...
Those who have visited Chicago will recognize the downtown area.
It was a great day!
We had some great signs there are lots of them hard to pick my favorite.
Limit politicians to two terms...................one in office, one in jail !!!!!
"The e-mail Bag"
MARRIAGE SEMINAR
While attending a Marriage Seminar dealing with communication, Tom and his wife Grace listened to the instructor, "It is essential that husbands and wives know each other's likes and dislikes."
He addressed the man, "Can you name your wife's favorite flower?"
Tom leaned over, touched his wife's arm gently and whispered, "It's Pillsbury, isn't it?
Cop Humor
These are actual comments made by 16 Police Officers. The comments were taken off actual police car videos around the country:
16. 'You know, stop lights don't come any redder than the one you just went through.'
15. 'Relax, the handcuffs are tight because they're new. They'll stretch after you wear them a while.'
14. 'If you take your hands off the car, I'll make your birth certificate a worthless document.'
13. 'If you run, you'll only go to jail tired.'
12. 'Can you run faster than 1200 feet per second? Because that's the speed of the bullet that'll be chasing you.'
11. 'You don't know how fast you were going? I guess that means I can write anything I want to on the ticket, huh?'
10. 'Yes, sir, you can talk to the shift supervisor, but I don't think it will help. Oh, did I mention that I'm the shift supervisor?'
9. 'Warning! You want a warning? O.K, I'm warning you not to do that again or I'll give you another ticket.'
8. 'The answer to this last question will determine whether you are drunk or not. Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?'
7. 'Fair? You want me to be fair? Listen, fair is a place where you go to ride on rides, eat cotton candy and corn dogs and step in monkey poop.'
6. 'Yeah, we have a quota. Two more tickets and my wife gets a toaster oven.'
5. 'In God we trust, all others we run through NCIC.'
4. 'How big were those 'two beers' you say you had?'
3. 'No sir, we don't have quotas anymore.. We used to, but now we're allowed to write as many tickets as we can.'
2. 'I'm glad to hear that the Chief (of Police) is a personal friend of yours. So you know someone who can post your bail.'
AND THE WINNER IS....
1. 'You didn't think we give pretty women tickets? You're right, we don't. Sign here.'
"Daily Motivations"
I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character
of an honest man. -- George Washington
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
"May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." (2 Corinthians 13:14)
Some people make the mistake of depersonalizing the Holy Spirit. They think of Him as some kind of will or force within them, not a He but an It. They confuse Him with the vague generic idea of a conscience. They pick up false ideas from Eastern religions about some small "spark" of God within us. But the Bible is very clear that none of these are accurate descriptions of who the Holy Spirit is and how He relates to us.
God's Spirit is fully a person with all His own individual traits. He speaks, inspires, guides, convicts, comforts, and encourages. He can be lied to and grieved. All these traits are functions of personality. Jesus always referred to Him in that light. He used the personal pronouns He and Him, but never the impersonal pronoun it. When He spoke to His disciples in the upper room about the Holy Spirit, He used the Greek word paracletos meaning called to one's side. That name tells us that the Holy Spirit has the ability to give aid and to comfort or console.
God's Spirit is a unique member of the Trinity. As you come to learn more about His work in your life, you will be more aware of His presence and power. You will come to recognize His gentle voice, welcoming His comfort and basking in His encouragement. He will come to be like a perfect friend. You will have an awareness of His personality and presence everywhere you go.
"The Patriot Post"
"As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight." -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
RE: THE LEFT
"'Saved or created' has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs. His latest invocation came [last week], when the president declared that the stimulus had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs -- and announced he was ramping up some of the stimulus spending so he could 'save or create' an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will 'save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years.' ... In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1..6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and -- presto! -- you have the president claiming he has 'saved or created' 150,000 jobs. It all makes for a much nicer spin, and helps you forget this is the same team that only a few months ago promised us that passing the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising over 8%. ... Now, something's wrong when the president invokes a formula that makes it impossible for him to be wrong and it goes largely unchallenged. It's true that almost any government spending will create some jobs and save others. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, that doesn't tell you much: The government, after all, can create jobs by hiring people to dig holes and fill them in. If the 'saved or created' formula looks brilliant, it's only because Mr. Obama and his team are not being called on their claims." -- columnist William McGurn
POLITICAL FUTURES
"At issue is whether America will continue to have a largely free-market-oriented health-care system or a government-run system where politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., make the most fundamental decisions about how we enter life, how we leave it and how we are cared for when we are ill. If Obama prevails, people who have so little respect for human life and private property that they approve of tax-funded abortion and tax-funded killing of human embryos will be empowered to decide who gets what tax-funded medical care and when. Our health care will belong to the government just as surely as General Motors does. ... If Obama and congressional liberals have their way, two of the three elements of a fully socialized health care system will be locked into law before Thanksgiving. The government will own a health-insurance company, and the government will require you to buy health insurance. The only thing Obama and congressional liberals won't formally require -- this year -- is that you buy your government-mandated insurance from the government-owned company. ... Socialized medicine must be stopped this summer -- or not at all." -- columnist Terence Jeffrey
THE LAST WORD
"What do Obama and God have in common? Neither has a birth certificate. How do they differ? God does not think he's Obama. And there's another difference between God and Obama, and that is that liberals love Obama. We have some more differences for you here between President Obama and God. God asks for only 10 percent of your money. God gives you freedom to live your life as you choose. God's plan to save us is actually written down for people to read." -- radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh
"Sunlight Foundation"
It's time for action, friends.
We (finally) have a bill introduced in the House of Representatives that will require legislation to be made public 72 hours before it is considered by Congress. Now we need to make sure it passes.
Right now, Congress doesn't actually read the legislation they vote on, and just as bad, we don't have the time to make our voice heard before a new law affects our lives. The status quo is wholly unacceptable, and now we have a way to start changing it.
http://www.readthebill.org
By introducing House Resolution 554, the bipartisan sponsors Reps. Baird (D-WA) and Culberson (R-TX) have taken us one step closer toward greater transparency, and given us a chance to improve the dialogue between members of Congress and the people who elected them. But H.R. 554 has a long way to go before this straightforward fix becomes law.
For starters, it needs a lot more support in Congress. We've made it easy for you sign our petition and call your representative to ask him or her to co-sponsor the bill. It's simple and important. Our goal is to deliver 15,000 signatures of support for the bill before Congress recesses in August.
Take a moment to sign, call and share the petition with others. It's a small action we can each take to raise awareness of how mind-numbingly absurd it is that Congress doesn't read its legislation, and ultimately make Congress more accountable to us.
http://www.readthebill.org
This is beyond a small procedural change, friends. There are many reasons having 72 hours of public notice prior to Congress's consideration of a bill is important, and here are a couple examples we found:
Most citizens would have supported amending the economic stimulus bill to remove the provision allowing AIG executives to receive retroactive bonuses - if only they had known.
The average person probably would have preferred to let the judicial system work rather than have Congress give immunity from lawsuits to telecommunications companies that participated in a controversial wiretapping scheme.
Workers hoping to retire on their 401(k) investments might have liked to have some serious analysis of whether credit default swaps ought to be regulated. We know how that worked out. And, just about everyone benefits from mandating time to check for questionable and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.
In these cases (and many others), only a handful of congressional staffers and possibly a few well-connected lobbyists knew exactly what was in the bills that, in turn, cost taxpayers billions of dollars, protected industry giants and wreaked havoc on our economy.
No one else - not most members of Congress, the media, interest groups or the public - had time to read the bills, analyze the ramifications and fix the problems before Congress made their decisions. Time for that to change.
Thousands of you have already signed the petition, and we hope you'll now help us get new signatures and make the calls necessary to have
the kind of impact we need.
Time for Congress to Read their Bills.
Jake Brewer
Engagement Director, Sunlight Foundation
"ACRU"
Robert Knight: Hate Crimes Bill Would Federalize Criminal Law, Revive Double Jeopardy
This column originally appeared on Townhall.com on June 30, 2009.
http://www.theacru.org/acru/robert_knight_hate_crimes_bill_would_federalize_criminal_law_revive_double_jeopardy/
Among its many defects, the proposed federal hate crimes bill virtually ensures that some defendants will face double jeopardy, whatever the outcome of their cases. It all depends on the whims of the folks occupying the Attorney General’s office, who may want to score political points at a defendant’s expense.
The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 909) now before the Senate, establishes "thought crime," violates equal protection by making some victims more important than others, elevates "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to be equivalent to civil rights categories like race, and greatly expands the federal role in criminal law.
In short, it's a grab bag of ways to violate genuine constitutional rights while addressing a non-issue. There is no compelling evidence that bias-motivated crimes are not being handled properly and perpetrators punished.
One of the bill's more dangerous features is its boldly stated authorization for the feds to intervene in any case they determine has not met "the federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence." Under current law, the feds can narrowly invoke their authority in cases where a "hate crime" has prevented someone from engaging in federally protected activities such as voting. The new law opens wide the door for the feds to barge in.
Gail Heriot, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, was one of two (out of six) witnesses testifying against the bill on June 25 before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She laid out precisely how the law could be abused, and concluded:
No one can deny the horror of violent crimes inspired by hatred of any kind. This is something upon which all decent people can agree. But it is precisely in those situations–where all decent people agree on the need to 'do something'–that mistakes are made. Passage of the vaguely-worded prohibitions in S. 909 would be a giant step toward the federalization of all crime. Given the many civil liberties issues that would raise, including the routine potential of double jeopardy prosecutions, this is a step that members of the Senate should think twice before they take.
In addition, the bill's wording guarantees future interpretive mischief, Heriot notes:
Back in 1998, attorneys at the Department of Justice, eager to expand federal authority, drafted language for the bill that would create federal jurisdiction over many cases that can't honestly be regarded as hate crimes–at least not as that term is understood by most Americans. The fact is that, despite the misleading use of the words "hate crime," [the bill] does not actually require that the defendant be inspired by hatred in order to convict. It is sufficient if he acts 'because of' someone's actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. Consider:
*Rapists are seldom indifferent to the gender of their victims. They are always chosen 'because of' their gender.
*A thief might well steal only from the disabled because, in general, they are less able to defend themselves. Literally, they're chosen 'because of' their disability.
* Suppose a burglar is surprised when the husband and wife who reside in the home return earlier than expected. The burglar shoots the husband and kills him, but finding himself unable to shoot a woman, turns and runs. Again, literally, the husband was killed ‘because of’ his gender.
The House version of the bill passed in April. President Obama said he wants to sign it before the August recess.
This bill is a grave threat to America's legal heritage of judging actions rather than thoughts or beliefs, and it will politicize law enforcement. Beyond the unfairness of excluding some groups, such as the elderly, the homeless, veterans and children, the proposed law advances an underlying, ambitious agenda to punish individuals and groups that hold traditional values.
During the Supreme Court hearings on the Boy Scouts case (Boy Scouts of America vs. Dale, 2000), the Rev. Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council was sitting next to the White House liaison on gay and lesbian issues. Thinking he was of like mind, she whispered to him: "We’re not going to win this case, but that’s okay. Once we get 'hate crime' laws on the books, we’re going to go after the Scouts and all the other bigots."
Why would she say that? Could it be that the bill will lay the foundation for suppressing groups with traditional values?
S. 909 adds "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to a list of specially protected classes such as race, ethnicity, sex and religion. Congress would thus create newly minted "civil rights" based on sexual vagaries. Like "sexual orientation," "gender identity" is fluid, and it includes transvestitism (cross-dressing) and transsexualism. It is notable that former homosexuals, or "ex-gays," perhaps the most victimized group based on "sexual orientation" perceptions, have not been mentioned as being covered by this bill. In the House, even an amendment to exclude "pedophilia" was defeated.
The law essentially criminalizes views or beliefs. Defendants' speech, writing, reading materials and organizational memberships would become key evidence to establish a "hate crime."
Some language was inserted to assuage free speech and liberty concerns, but American Civil Rights Union Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski observes: "It's only a statement of the obvious, so it has no legal effect. No statute can abridge constitutionally-protected speech. If any speech is burdened, and the speaker files suit, then the process and the result is the same ... [This] is just there to help pass the bill by giving people a talking point to say 'this law does nothing to violate anyone's free speech rights.' It makes no difference in court whatsoever."
The tendency to equate conservative views with "extremism" was on display earlier this year when a revealing memo surfaced at the Department of Homeland Security and for which Secretary Janet Napolitano was forced to apologize. The memo, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," listed as candidates for "violent radicalization" such Americans as returning veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, people who oppose illegal immigration and gun control, and those who warn of losing American sovereignty to globalism. This characterization of millions of Americans as security threats should give everyone pause about passing laws that redefine legal protection based on group status.
The bill also represents yet another abuse of the Constitution's Commerce Clause, using it to justify federal intervention upon the flimsiest tie-ins to interstate trade.
In 2007, America had more than 11 million incidents of violence or property crime, of which 7,624 incidents were classified as "hate crimes." Not exactly an epidemic of "hate" in a nation of more than 300 million.
The proposed law will politicize crime, leading to pressure on police and prosecutors to devote more of their limited resources to some victims over others. If you doubt this, consider the tsunami of media accompanying the Matthew Shepard case in Wyoming in 1998, while the murder of Kristen Lamb, an eight-year-old girl, a month before was virtually ignored.
Hate crime laws lay the groundwork for assaults on freedom of speech and freedom of religion. We can look to our northern neighbor for clues about what happens when such laws are enacted. In Saskatchewan, Canada, a newspaper publisher and a man who placed a newspaper ad faced jail and were fined $4,500 each, merely for running an ad containing references to several Bible verses regarding homosexuality. A college teacher who wrote a letter to the editor affirming traditional morality was suspended. And best-selling author Mark Steyn (America Alone), has faced charges in national and provincial tribunals for the supposed "hate crime" of reporting what Muslim leaders in Europe themselves say about changing demographics.
The Senate should think long and hard before saddling Americans with this kind of dangerous nonsense.
"II Chron. 7:14"
By Pat Grant
AFTER A DAY OF CONTEMPLATION AND SOUL SEARCHING, I HAVE DECIDED TO REACH OUT TO MY FRIENDS AND RELATIVES AND ASK YOU TO DO SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN TROUBLING ME FOR A LONG TIME.
OUR NATION IS/HAS BEEN ON THE SLIPPERY SLOPE TO HELL FOR A LONG TIME. IF YOU LOOK AROUND YOU WILL FIND CORRUPTION, GREED, MORAL DECAY AND A STEADY MOVE AWAY FROM THE THINGS THAT MADE US GREAT. THE PRINCIPLES UPON WHICH THIS NATION WAS FOUNDED ARE NO LONGER OUR
BACKBONE. HOWEVER, WE CAN REVERSE THIS TREND.
IN GOD'S WORD HE STATES,"IF MY PEOPLE WHO ARE CALLED BY MY NAME WILL HUMBLE THEMSELVES, AND PRAY AND SEEK MY FACE, AND TURN FROM THEIR WICKED WAYS, THEN I WILL HEAR FROM HEAVEN, AND WILL FORGIVE THEIR SIN AND HEAL THEIR LAND."
I AM CONVINCED THAT WE MUST PRAY FOR OUR NATION AND ITS LEADERS AND ASK FOR FORGIVENESS. SO I ASK YOU TO JOIN ME IN THIS PLEA TO OUR LORD.
WOULD YOU PLEASE SEND THIS TO AT LEAST 25 PEOPLE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK, (SEND IT TO ALL OF THEM). ASK THEM TO PRAY EVERYDAY. 25 TO THE 5TH POWER IS 9,765,625 PEOPLE. IMAGINE IF EACH PERSON REACHES TEN OTHERS.
IF YOU DO AND THEY COMPLY, WE WILL LIFT UP MILLIONS OF PRAYERS A DAY TO OUR CREATOR. HE WILL HEAR US AND IN FAITH WILL ANSWER.
Let me just add a quote from Ronald Reagan - "If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under." I truly believe this is why the United States of America is in the shape we are in today. Most people have forgotten that we are ONE NATION UNDER GOD! Let us as Christians stand up and remind people of this. ~ Have a Blessed Day!
"The Web"
10 Roses For You
http://www.authorstream..com/presentation/vkaisthaaseem-77173-10-roses-vanshaj-amogh-entertainment-ppt-powerpoint/
Obama. the Radical Son
Rick Moran
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/07/obama_the_radical_son.html
A shocking article written by a young Barack Obama while he was at Columbia sheds some light on the president's real attitudes toward the United States and our system of "economic injustice."
Andy McCarthy of NRO's The Corner has the story that should have been front page news a year ago:
During the campaign, I wrote a piece called "Why Won't Obama Talk About Columbia? - The years he won't discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about." So now, nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign - other than in Wasilla - and whaddya know? The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, "Breaking the War Mentality," that Columbia student Barack Obama wrote for a campus newspaper. The article shows that Obama dreaded American "militarism" and its "military-industrial interests," while effusing enthusiasm for the dangerously delusional nuclear-freeze movement.
Moreover, while indicating a preference for the political wisdom of reggae singer Peter Tosh over Ronald Reagan or Scoop Jackson, Obama bewailed the "narrow focus" of anti-militarism activists, worrying that they were targeting the "symptoms" rather than the real "disease," namely, America's underlying economic and political injustice.
Some of the things Obama wrote in this March 10, 1983 article or so out of the mainstream of even today's far left Democratic party that it is clear we have a radical leftist on his way to Moscow to negotiate our nuclear arsenal while threatening to bypass the senate altogether in order to make it stick.
Here is the president of the United States as a student at Columbia:
Generally, the narrow focus of the [Nuclear] Freeze movement as well as academic discussions of first versus second strike capabilities, suit the military-industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion dollar erector sets. When Peter Tosh sings that "everybody's asking for peace, but nobody's asking for justice," one is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem instead of the disease itself.
And that "disease" is American "militarism" and "economic injustice." Here's our president writing what McCarthy aptly calls "leftist gobbldygook:"
Indeed, the most pervasive malady of the collegiate system specifically, and the American experience generally, is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy. What the members of ARA and SAM try to do is infuse what they have learned about the current situation, bring the words of that formidable roster on the face of Butler Library, names like Thoreau, Jefferson, and Whitman, to bear on the twisted logic of which we are today a part. By adding their energy and effort in order to enhance the possibility of a decent world, they may help deprive us of a spectacular experience -that of war; But then, there are some things we shouldn't have to live through in order to want to avoid the experience.
Is it possible that Obama moderated his views over the years and is now just a good old fashioned Democrat rather than a far left radical loon who quotes a reggae singer to make his case against the military?
I will allow that as we get older, we are not quite as sure of ourselves as we were in our youth. But I think Obama's policies bear out the idea that he despises capitalism, is distrustful of our military, and still harbors extraordinarily naive views of how the world works and America's role in it.
Absolutely remarkable that this article is just emerging now. If anything proved that the press failed to do its traditional job of vetting candidates for the presidency it is the discovery of this article which no doubt will be suppressed to some extent. Not so much to protect Obama but to hide the fact that journalists failed to do their job before the election.
HOW TO CATCH WILD PIGS
There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist government. In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question.
He asked, ‘ Do you know how to catch wild pigs?’ The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. ‘You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how To forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.
The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms- just a little at a time.
One should always remember ‘There is no such thing as a free Lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.
I just don’t know how some people don’t get this..
Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government 'help' is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life then you will probably delete this email, but God help you when the gate slams shut!
Keep your eyes on the newly elected politicians who are about to slam the gate on America ..
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have" -- Thomas Jefferson
Global Warming Overshadowed: Media Give Massive Cap-and-Trade Tax Second Billing
Suppression of science and narrow passage of climate change legislation take back seat to celebrity deaths and health care.
By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20090701131617.aspx
The news cycle has been dominated by celebrity deaths – Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and even TV pitchman Billy Mays – and President Barack Obama’s health care initiative. Obama has used the compliant media to keep the focus to health care, and they are neglecting a critical largest news event that could impact the lives of every man, woman and child for the foreseeable future.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a 1,200-page climate change bill known as the “American Clean Energy and Security Act” sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. and Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., by a narrow 219-212 vote on June 26.
Prospects for that piece of environmental legislation might have been hurt had journalists reported the scientific censorship taking place in the Obama administration. A veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency strongly questioned the theory of manmade global warming in a report that was then silenced by the administration. That’s exactly the opposite of how many journalists handled a similar controversy during the Bush administration.
The news blackout helped the new bill, which has been referred to as the “cap-and-tax bill” by opponents, who point out the massive tax increase that the American public will be burdened with as a result. So contentious is the bill that it inspired the likes of liberal bomb-thrower and columnist Paul Krugman to accuse those same opponents of treason in the op-ed pages of The New York Times.
But Krugman at least acknowledged the bill’s existence. Few others in the mainstream media have. Climate change has been a pet issue the past several years for the media, so their silence is strange.
A Double Standard: EPA Skeptic Suppressed – Ignored by All, but Fox News
Throughout the latter half of George W. Bush’s presidency, some in the media were quick to cry foul when accusations surfaced science was being silenced in the name of politics, especially in the case of NASA climate expert James Hansen.
But fast-forward to June 2009 and the early stages of the Barack Obama presidency. The cap-and-trade bill just passed the House and was on its way to the Senate when a 38-year EPA veteran, Senior Operations Research Analyst Alan Carlin, came forward and said his 98-page study that questioned the theory of anthropogenic global warming had been quashed by the administration.
Carlin appeared on the Fox News Channel’s June 30 “Fox & Friends” and told of how his report was dismissed by the EPA because his “comments do not help the legal policy or case.” Those revelations caused Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., to call for a congressional inquiry.
“He came out with the truth,” Inhofe said to Fox News on June 29. “They don’t want the truth at the EPA. We’re going to expose it."
Nonetheless, Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network have been virtually alone in covering the story – in sharp contrast to similar revelations from the opposite side of the issue during the Bush Administration. A scientist was allegedly censored because his findings went against the politics of the administration in power. That got top billing by some media outlets.
“The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming,” Andrew Revkin wrote for the front page of the January 29, 2006 issue of The New York Times. “The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.”
That article sparked coverage from other mainstream media outlets, eager to show there was an effort by the Bush administration to silence Hansen. CBS “60 Minutes” contributor and regular global warming alarmist Scott Pelley reported that Hansen faced trouble by appearing on his program.
“As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk,” Pelley said on the March 19, 2006 “60 Minutes.” “He says there are things the White House doesn’t want you to hear, but he’s going to say them anyway. Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He’s the head of NASA’s top institute studying the climate. But, as we first reported last spring, this eminent scientist says the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science. Well, there’ll be none of that tonight because James Hansen is telling what he knows on ‘60 Minutes.’”
Hansen parlayed the fame he gained from dozens of news interviews into a book called “Censoring Science: Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming.”
Political Realities Ignored: Narrow House Passage Means Likely End of the Road
When the Waxman-Markey bill passed in the House on June 26 by a mere seven-vote margin, even with harsh criticism from House Minority Leader John Boehner, it was celebrated as a win by some in the global warming alarmist movement. Steve Bouchard, campaign manager of former Vice President Al Gore chalked the vote up as a victory.
“Today, we have something to celebrate,” Bouchard wrote in an e-mail sent out immediately after the House vote on June 26. “For the first time in decades, we have taken bold action to help solve the climate crisis. I look forward to working with you in the days ahead.”
The coverage on the networks wasn’t as “celebratory,” although he bill was commonly hailed as “sweeping.”
“In Washington, the House last night narrowly passed a sweeping climate change bill,” “NBC Nightly News” weekend anchor Lester Holt said on his June 27 broadcast. “President Obama says it’s a bold and necessary step to fight global warming and encourage a new era of green energy. Critics, however, say the new cap and trade system to limit greenhouse gases will lead to higher energy costs.”
On the June 27 broadcast of ABC’s “World News,” David Muir said “Back in Washington tonight, President Obama is now urging the Senate to pass the most sweeping bill ever to address global warming. It was a squeaker in the House last night. And it might be an even tougher sale in the Senate.”
This was a significant understatement. Immediately following the House vote on June 26, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., issued his own statement.
“Today’s razor thin vote in the House spells doom in the Senate,” Inhofe said. “Despite a large Democratic majority in the House, and the fact that this is one of the President’s top priorities, the Democratic leadership was forced to do everything possible to get a bill passed. Their slim victory could come at a high price – this is the BTU tax all over again.”
And so far, Inhofe’s analogy about the BTU tax has proven valid. Keith Hennessey, a senior White House economic advisor to President George W. Bush, recently recounted the events that an unfolded around the 1993 BTU tax vote on his Web site. Hennessey explained the BTU tax bill narrowly passed in the House, but was dead on arrival in the Senate – and both houses of Congress were Democrat-controlled at the time.
Inhofe has consistently conveyed that message over the past few months as the Waxman-Markey bill has been debated – it won’t pass regardless of the Democrat’s best efforts.
It could be that the mainstream media understands this and has determined not to waste time on a story with a dead end. It’s otherwise difficult to believe that a major piece of legislation of this nature wouldn’t garner significant media coverage. According to The Heritage Foundation, gas and energy prices would spike, costing American families an additional $3,000 per year. Jobs would be lost and the prices of goods would jump – all in exchange for little impact on the environment.
However, as a June 29 Business & Media Institute analysis of USA Today pointed out, the death of pop singer Michael Jackson received massive coverage for three straight days. Waxman-Markey was nowhere to be found.
3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate—
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911
Contact Information:
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
Office of Communication
119 National Center
Reston, VA 20192
Read FAQs about the Bakken Formation.
Listen to a podcast with the lead scientist on this topic.
Reston, VA - North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.
A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151million barrels of oil.
Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources.
New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger technically recoverable oil volumes. About 105 million barrels of oil were produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007.
The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000.
The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A "continuous" oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest "continuous" oil accumulation in the U.S. is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1.0 billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil.
"It is clear that the Bakken formation contains a significant amount of oil - the question is how much of that oil is recoverable using today's technology?" said Senator Byron Dorgan, of North Dakota. "To get an answer to this important question, I requested that the U.S. Geological Survey complete this study, which will provide an up-to-date estimate on the amount of technically recoverable oil resources in the Bakken Shale formation."
The USGS estimate of 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil has a mean value of 3.65 billion barrels. Scientists conducted detailed studies in stratigraphy and structural geology and the modeling of petroleum geochemistry. They also combined their findings with historical exploration and production analyses to determine the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil estimates.
USGS worked with the North Dakota Geological Survey, a number of petroleum industry companies and independents, universities and other experts to develop a geological understanding of the Bakken Formation. These groups provided critical information and feedback on geological and engineering concepts important to building the geologic and production models used in the assessment.
Five continuous assessment units (AU) were identified and assessed in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana - the Elm Coulee-Billings Nose AU, the Central Basin-Poplar Dome AU, the Nesson-Little Knife Structural AU, the Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and the Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU.
At the time of the assessment, a limited number of wells have produced oil from three of the assessments units in Central Basin-Poplar Dome, Eastern Expulsion Threshold, and Northwest Expulsion Threshold.
The Elm Coulee oil field in Montana, discovered in 2000, has produced about 65 million barrels of the 105 million barrels of oil recovered from the Bakken Formation.
Results of the assessment can be found at http://energy.usgs.gov.
Palin Attorney Warns Media on Defamation
Monday, July 6, 2009 2:17 PM
By: Rick Pedraza
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s attorney, Thomas Van Flein, issued a four-page warning to mainstream news organizations over the weekend that he will sue on behalf of his client if “defamatory material” relating to her or her family finds its way from Internet blogs to print.
In the statement released Saturday, Van Flein noted there will be severe consequences to those organizations that print stories accusing the governor of embezzling funds in the construction of a sports arena in Wasilla, Alaska. The FBI today released a statement saying Palin is not under investigation, Politico reports.
“We are not investigating her," FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez said Sunday. "Normally we don't confirm or deny those kinds of allegations out there, but by not doing so it just casts her in a very bad light. There is just no truth to those rumors out there in the blogosphere."
Palin's personal spokeswoman, Meg Stapleton, sent the statement from Van Flein attacking "false and defamatory allegations that the 'real' reasons for Governor Palin's resignation stem from an alleged criminal investigation pertaining to the construction of the Wasilla Sports Complex,” the Anchorage Daily News reports.
Radio talk show host and blogger Shannyn Moore, who Van Flein called out personally for defaming Palin, followed that up by holding a press conference of her own in Anchorage yesterday to respond to Palin’s attorney’s claims.
Moore went on national television Friday, the day Palin said she would resign, and mentioned the rumor to MSNBC's David Shuster.
"There is a scandal rumor here that there is a criminal investigation into some activities and that's been rumored for about, I don't know, probably six weeks or two months," Moore told Shuster, noting Palin appeared nervous as she announced her resignation.
“I think she [Palin] was actually doing damage control for news that's coming up later," Moore said in explaining Palin’s abrupt resignation after serving just two-and-a-half years of a four-year term in office.
"I can say definitively I am aware of no criminal investigation whatsoever involving Sarah Palin. Zero," Van Flein said.
"The Palins used a combination of personal savings, equity from the sale of their private home, and conventional bank financing to build the house, like millions of American families," Van Flein wrote in reference to the Lake Lucille family home Palin’s husband Todd built as general contractor.
Van Fleini said Todd "is no stranger to construction. We will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation."
In response to the defamation allegation, Moore said: "I haven't defamed the governor; I reported on speculation and rumor in Alaska. It's not my rumor; it's been out there for 10 months and the First Amendment protects me. Even if I didn't say it's 'rumors and speculation,' I'm still protected –– I would just lose credibility, which I'm not willing to do."
Moore called Palin "a coward and a bully" and said she only pointed out that rumors existed about Palin’s finances but never claimed them to be fact.
"What kind of politician attacks an ordinary American on the Fourth of July for speaking her mind?” Moore said. “What's wrong with her? The first amendment was designed to protect people like me from people like her. Our American revolution got rid of kings. And it got rid of queens, as well. Am I annoyed? You betcha. Shannyn Moore will not be muzzled.”
Sarah Palin story sparks Republican family feud
By JONATHAN MARTIN
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24392.html#ixzz0K9CNPxPH&D
A hard-hitting piece on Sarah Palin in the new Vanity Fair
has touched off a blistering exchange of insults among high-profile Republicans over last year’s GOP ticket – tearing open fresh wounds about leaks surrounding Palin and revealing for the first time some of the internal wars that paralyzed the campaign in its final days.
Rival factions close to the McCain campaign have been feuding since last fall over Palin, usually waging the battle in the shadows with anonymous quotes. Now, however, some of the most well-known names in Republican politics are going on-the-record with personal attacks and blame-casting.
William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard and at times an informal adviser to Sen. John McCain, touched off the latest back-and-forth Tuesday morning with a post on his magazine’s blog criticizing the Todd Purdum-authored Palin story and pointing a finger at Steve Schmidt, McCain’s campaign manager.
Kristol cited a passage in Purdum’s piece in which “some top aides” were said to worry about the Alaska governor’s “mental state” and the prospect that the Alaska governor may be suffering from post-partum depression following the birth of her son Trig. “In fact, one aide who raised this possibility in the course of trashing Palin’s mental state to others in the McCain-Palin campaign was Steve Schmidt,” Kristol wrote.
Asked about the accusation, Schmidt fired back in an e-mail: “I'm sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”
“After all, his management of [former Vice President] Dan Quayle’s public image as his chief of staff is still something that takes your breath away,” Schmidt continued. “His attack on me is categorically false.”
Asked directly in a telephone interview if he brought up the prospect of Palin suffering from post-partum depression, Schmidt said: “His allegation that I was defaming Palin by alleging post-partum depression at the campaign headquarters is categorically untrue. In fact, I think it rises to the level of a slander because it’s about the worst thing you can say about somebody who does what I do for a living.”
But Kristol’s charge was seconded by Randy Scheunemann, a longtime foreign policy adviser to McCain who is also close to the Standard editor and was thought to be a Palin ally within the campaign.
“Steve Schmidt has a congenital aversion to the truth,” Scheunemann said. “On two separate and distinct occasions, he speculated about about Governor Palin having post-partum depression, and on the second he threatened that if more negative publicity about the handling of Governor Palin emerged that he would leak his speculation [about post-partum depression] to the press. It was like meeting Tony Soprano.”
Schmidt said Scheunemann’s charges were “categorically untrue.”
“It is inappropriate for me to discuss personnel issues from the campaign,” Schmidt continued. “But suffice it to say Randy is saying these things not because they’re true but because he wants to damage my reputation because of consequences he faced for actions he took.”
Schmidt is alluding, without saying so directly, to the stories that emerged after the campaign that Scheunemann had been fired.
Scheunemann said Schmidt did try to fire him but added: “I’ve got a pay stub through November 15th.”
The questions about Scheunemann being terminated are central to the larger battle about who was trashing Palin, something that quickly came to the surface in the back and forth between Schmidt and Kristol on Tuesday.
The vitriol also suggests the degree to which Palin remains a Rorschach test not simply to Republicans nationally but within a tight circle of elite operatives and commentators, many of whom seem ready to carry their arguments in 2012. Was Palin a fresh talent whose debut was mishandled by self-serving campaign insiders, or an eccentric “diva” who had no business on the national stage? Going forward, does she offer a conservative and charismatic face for a demoralized and star-less party? Or is she a loose cannon who should be consigned to the tabloids where she can reside in perpetuity with other flash-in-the-pan sensations?
Schmidt, who has returned to his California-based political and public affairs consulting business, said that he “worked incredibly hard during the campaign to defend Sarah Palin and her family against a lot of attacks that I thought then and think today were very unfair.”
And he got in a dig at Kristol, who frequently offered unvarnished assessments of McCain’s campaign from his perch at the Standard, on Fox News, where he is a contributor, and in his then-New York Times column.
“Bill Kristol, going back to the time of the campaign, has taken a lot of cheap shots at the campaign without ever offering a plausible path to victory,” Schmidt said. “He’s in the business of ad hominem insults and criticism.”
Responding to Schmidt’s counterattack, Kristol directly fingered Schmidt: “It’s simply a fact that when the going got tough, Steve Schmidt trashed Sarah Palin, both within the campaign and (on background) to journalists. This was after Steve took credit for the Palin pick when, at first, he thought it made him look good. John McCain deserved better.”
At this, Schmidt unloaded in a lengthy telephone interview, suggesting that Kristol was carrying out a personal vendetta based out of anger over the attempt to fire Scheunemann in the final days of the campaign.
In doing so, Schmidt revealed what has been whispered about for months following the campaign: that he and another top aide had ordered a leak hunt in the campaign’s internal e-mail system.
“What this is about is a personal issue that happened late in the campaign relating to a close, personal friend of Bill Kristol and people at The Weekly Standard,” Schmidt said, refusing to use Scheunemann’s name.
“At the end of the campaign there were a series of leaks that were so damaging that it was consuming the 24-hour cable news cycle. Leaks to reporters where Sarah Palin was called all manner of names. [McCain senior adviser] Rick Davis and I jointly felt that was outrageous. So we made an attempt for the first time in the campaign to try to ID who was leaking information that was so damaging and demoralizing to a campaign that was in very difficult circumstances,” Schmidt said, noting that an IT professional executed a system-wide search by keyword.
“What was discovered was an e-mail from a very senior staff member to Bill Kristol that then entered into the news current and continued the negative in-fighting stories for an additional news cycles. I recommended tough medicine for that individual that was carried out,” Schmidt said, again referring to Scheunemann. “Bill Kristol might not have liked that decision, and he might be mad about what happened to his friend, but going all the way back he has been a part of this story and I’ve preserved his confidentiality in that until now. But his use of his public forums to take a personal fight and make character attacks is just simply dishonest and wrong.”
Scheunemann, confirming that his e-mail had been searched, accused Schmidt of “acting in a manner of Iranian secret police” in going to his account.
The foreign policy hand said what was discovered was a message from Kristol inquiring who was the source in the campaign of the “diva” leak, the now-famous complaint from a senior McCain campaign official to CNN’s Dana Bash that Palin was acting like a spoiled and selfish celebrity.
Schmidt suggested that Scheunemann had fingered Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain adviser who helped work with Palin, to Kristol in the message.
“It led to a whole another round of speculation, including Fred Barnes the next night attacking Nicolle Wallace on the air,” Schmidt said, suggesting without saying directly that was why an effort was made to terminate Scheunemann. Barnes, another Weekly Standard editor and Fox News contributor, accused Wallace on Fox News in late October of being “a coward” for running up tens of thousands of dollars in high-end clothes for Palin and then letting the governor take the blame for the purchases. After Wallace denied she had purchased the clothes, Barnes apologized on the air the following night.
But Scheunemann said the clothes controversy was an entirely separate issue and one which he made no mention of in his e-mail to Kristol.
Asked directly if he accused Nicolle Wallace of being the source behind the “diva” leak in his message to Kristol, Scheunemann said: “My e-mail did not accuse Nicolle Wallace. It said something very disparaging about Nicolle but it did not accuse her of being the leak.”
A source familiar with the contents of the e-mail said that Scheunemann actually accused Nicolle Wallace’s husband, Mark Wallace, of being the source of the leak.
When Kristol questioned the likelihood of a male like Mark Wallace using such a gossipy term as diva, this source said, Scheunemann wrote back that Mark Wallace knows something about divas because he’s married to a diva.
Asked about the e-mail, Nicolle Wallace said: “I did not have any knowledge of this. This is all news to me.”
As for being called a “diva,” Wallace laughed for a few seconds.
“I don’t have anything to say on that,” she said.
Mark Wallace, taking the phone from his wife, also laughed about the diva accusation but wouldn’t respond when asked whether he had been the source of the “diva” leak. He explained that he had followed a "zero talk policy with the press" regarding the campaign and wanted to honor that.
But, after an early version of this story was posted on-line, he made an exception and offered a flat denial: "No, never. I don't think Sarah Palin is a diva."
The leak-hunting, Scheunemann said, began after POLITICO’s Ben Smith wrote a story in late October suggesting that Palin had ”gone rogue” and began ignoring the advice of her campaign handlers.
“So after that, they went nuclear with ‘diva’ the next day,” Scheunemann said, referring to the Palin-bashing done to CNN’s Bash the day after the POLITICO story. “But did anybody search Mark or Nicolle Wallace’s e-mails for leaks to Dana Bash?”
Schmidt said Kristol was driven by a personal vendetta over the attempted termination of his decades-long friend, Scheunemann.
“Nonsense,” Kristol replied. “My post today was (self-evidently) triggered by the Todd Purdum article that appeared today, which had Schmidt’s fingerprints all over it. I hadn’t thought about Schmidt in months, and will be happy now to return to more pressing issues, like the presidency of Barack Obama.”
As for the charges of being a sunshine soldier with regard to Palin, Schmidt said: “Nonsense. I’m a team player. That’s a reflection of [Kristol’s] values. He’s the Washington, D.C., talking head and glitterati. I live in Northern California and I really don’t give a s--- about that stuff.”
The nasty back-and-forth between the two well-known Republicans and re-litigating of internal backbiting underscores the degree to which the internecine and very personal battle over last fall’s ticket between those seen as Palin allies and Palin detractors still rages on nearly six months into President Obama’s term.
And it comes as Palin struggles to find her footing, at times appearing to want to take a strictly Alaska-first approach, but then re-emerging on the national stage – something chronicled in the nearly 10,000-word Vanity Fair article.
Loyalists to Palin, including Kristol, were outraged at Purdum’s piece, believing it to be another example of what they see as elite media contempt for the Wasilla native.
In his post, Kristol also criticized Purdum for writing that several Alaskans had told him during the reporting of the piece that they had checked the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” and found it fit their governor.
“Is there any real chance that ‘several’ Alaskans independently told Purdum that they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?” Kristol wrote. “I don’t believe it for a moment. I’ve (for better or worse) moved in pretty well-educated circles in my life, and I’ve gone decades without ‘several’ people telling me they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”
In response, Purdum, a Princeton graduate, wrote of his Harvard-degreed critic: “I'm not nearly as well-educated as Bill, but the great Irving Berlin taught me that ‘you don't have to go to a private school not to pick up a penny near a stubborn mule.’ In the age of Google, I'm confident that plenty of Alaskans know more about finding medical reference works – and all sorts of other knowledge – than Bill thinks they do.
Do you get the feeling Americans are not happy with the new administration?
Let's "hope" it (administration) will "change".........
http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?t=206637
ONE SIGN SAYS: "Limit politicians to two terms........ one in office, one in jail!!" LOL!
Right in Obama's back yard!! I'm more proud of the folks in the windy city, than I thought was ever possible! By the way, I didn't see the ABC CBS NBC CNN MSNBC covering this - did you? Wonder why...
Those who have visited Chicago will recognize the downtown area.
It was a great day!
We had some great signs there are lots of them hard to pick my favorite.
Limit politicians to two terms...................one in office, one in jail !!!!!
"The e-mail Bag"
MARRIAGE SEMINAR
While attending a Marriage Seminar dealing with communication, Tom and his wife Grace listened to the instructor, "It is essential that husbands and wives know each other's likes and dislikes."
He addressed the man, "Can you name your wife's favorite flower?"
Tom leaned over, touched his wife's arm gently and whispered, "It's Pillsbury, isn't it?
Cop Humor
These are actual comments made by 16 Police Officers. The comments were taken off actual police car videos around the country:
16. 'You know, stop lights don't come any redder than the one you just went through.'
15. 'Relax, the handcuffs are tight because they're new. They'll stretch after you wear them a while.'
14. 'If you take your hands off the car, I'll make your birth certificate a worthless document.'
13. 'If you run, you'll only go to jail tired.'
12. 'Can you run faster than 1200 feet per second? Because that's the speed of the bullet that'll be chasing you.'
11. 'You don't know how fast you were going? I guess that means I can write anything I want to on the ticket, huh?'
10. 'Yes, sir, you can talk to the shift supervisor, but I don't think it will help. Oh, did I mention that I'm the shift supervisor?'
9. 'Warning! You want a warning? O.K, I'm warning you not to do that again or I'll give you another ticket.'
8. 'The answer to this last question will determine whether you are drunk or not. Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?'
7. 'Fair? You want me to be fair? Listen, fair is a place where you go to ride on rides, eat cotton candy and corn dogs and step in monkey poop.'
6. 'Yeah, we have a quota. Two more tickets and my wife gets a toaster oven.'
5. 'In God we trust, all others we run through NCIC.'
4. 'How big were those 'two beers' you say you had?'
3. 'No sir, we don't have quotas anymore.. We used to, but now we're allowed to write as many tickets as we can.'
2. 'I'm glad to hear that the Chief (of Police) is a personal friend of yours. So you know someone who can post your bail.'
AND THE WINNER IS....
1. 'You didn't think we give pretty women tickets? You're right, we don't. Sign here.'
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