December 21, 2005
Woman, 99, Is Secret Santa at Nursing Home
Dec 20 ODESSA, Texas - Residents at the Deerings Nursing Home have a very special secret Santa _ 99-year-old Sybil Rice. Rice, who lives on her own, makes gift baskets for the residents. On Monday, she and her family delivered 70 baskets to residents. "I think it's quite unusual _ she's doing it for people younger than she is," Nina Rice, her 72-year-old daughter-in-law, said in a story in Tuesday's Odessa American. "She shops on her walker and makes these sacks (for residents). She buys sugar-free things (for diabetics) and until this year, she has also baked sugar-free cakes."
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/20/D8EKBJK80.html
Xmas
Xmas (or X-mas) is an abbreviation for Christmas. It is derived from the word ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, transliterated as Christos, which is Greek for Christ. Greek is the language in which the whole New Testament was written.
Originally, in "Xmas", X represented the Greek letter χ (see chi). It was pronounced with an aspirated [kh], which is the first letter of Christ's name in Greek. An upper-case χ has the same shape as a Latin alphabet letter X, hence the abbreviation "Xmas".
It seems Christmas has been abbreviated for at least the past 1,000 years...
...many people believe that the term is often used as a tool by some to "take Christ out of Christmas" as a means of secularization or a vehicle for pushing political correctness. This notion is greatly disputed....
...In ancient Christian art χ and χρ (Chi Ro--the first two letters in Greek of Christos) are abbreviations for Christ's name. In many manuscripts of the New Testament and icons, X is an abbreviation for Christos, as is XC (the first and last letters in Greek, using the lunate sigma); compare IC for Jesus in Greek. The Oxford English Dictionary documents the use of this abbreviation back to 1551, 50 years before the first English colonists came to North America and 60 years before the King James Version of the Bible was completed. At the same time, Xian and Xianity were in frequent use as abbreviations of "Christian" and "Christianity".
The abbreviation is widely but not universally accepted; some view it as demeaning to Christ, whilst others find it helpful to use in text messages and emails to save space. ..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas
Sounds like Tolkien's Orcs...
Stalin's half-man, half-ape super-warriors
THE Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.
Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.
According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."
In 1926 the Politburo in Moscow passed the request to the Academy of Science with the order to build a "living war machine". The order came at a time when the Soviet Union was embarked on a crusade to turn the world upside down, with social engineering seen as a partner to industrialisation: new cities, architecture, and a new egalitarian society were being created.
...Mr Ivanov was highly regarded. He had established his reputation under the Tsar when in 1901 he established the world's first centre for the artificial insemination of racehorses.
Mr Ivanov's ideas were music to the ears of Soviet planners and in 1926 he was dispatched to West Africa with $200,000 to conduct his first experiment in impregnating chimpanzees.
Meanwhile, a centre for the experiments was set up in Georgia - Stalin's birthplace - for the apes to be raised.
Mr Ivanov's experiments, unsurprisingly from what we now know, were a total failure. He returned to the Soviet Union, only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail.
...For his expensive failure, he was sentenced to five years' jail, which was later commuted to five years' exile in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan in 1931. A year later he died, reportedly after falling sick while standing on a freezing railway platform.
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2434192005
Appeals Court Approves Ten Commandments Display in Kentucky
December 20, 2005- A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in favor of keeping the Ten Commandments in a display of historical documents at the courthouse in Mercer County, Ky.
In its 3-0 decision, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an earlier ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and rejected an argument from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that the display in Harrodsburg violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment...
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200512\NAT20051220b.html
State Budgets Boosted by Bush Tax Cuts, Analysts Say
December 21, 2005 - After battling red ink for the past few years, state officials are watching their revenues increase to create budget surpluses, a development some analysts attribute to the financial growth caused by the tax cuts signed into law by President Bush in 2003.
According to the most recent Fiscal Survey of States released by the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO), only three states had to scale back their originally budgeted amounts in 2005 when revenues failed to meet projections.
...Dan Mitchell, senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told Cybercast News Service that "there's no question state government finances are very, very closely tied to the health of the national economy."
Forty-two states ended up collecting more revenue than they expected in the fiscal year that ended in June, the NASBO report states. Alabama, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey and South Dakota saw their revenue projections match the FY 2005 amount budgeted, and only in three states -- Indiana, Missouri and Washington -- did the revenue come in short of the amount originally anticipated in fiscal year 2005.
The good news is expected to continue through the 2006 fiscal year, when proposed state budgets anticipate an average 5.2 percent increase in revenue and spending growth of about 3.8 percent...
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=\SpecialReports\archive\200512\SPE20051221a.html
Hurricane Katrina Hit As Category 3, Not 4
Katrina hit the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane, not a Category 4 as first thought, and New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain likely were spared the storm's strongest winds, the National Hurricane Center said Tuesday…
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/20/D8EKC9S08.html
CARTER EXECUTIVE ORDER: 'ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE' WITHOUT COURT ORDER Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: "Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order":
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo12139.htm
CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SECRET SEARCH ON AMERICANS -- WITHOUT COURT ORDER
Clinton, February 9, 1995: "The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order":
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-12949.htm
[from the] WASH POST, July 15, 1994: …Extend not only to searches of the homes of U.S. citizens but also -- in the delicate words of a Justice Department official -- to "places where you wouldn't find or would be unlikely to find information involving a U.S. citizen... would allow the government to use classified electronic surveillance techniques, such as infrared sensors to observe people inside their homes, without a court order."
Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, the Clinton administration believes the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes."
Secret searches and wiretaps of Aldrich Ames's office and home in June and October 1993, both without a federal warrant.
http://nationalreview.com/york/york200512200946.asp
The Constitution is not a suicide pact
...Ironically, many historians credit the phrase “The Constitution is not a suicide pact” to the Supreme Court. The author of this phrase is none other than that uber-executive Abraham Lincoln. Historian James G. Randall acknowledges, “No president has carried the power of presidential edict and executive order (independently of Congress) so far as [Lincoln] did.”
Remember President Lincoln? While many may not be aware, he’s the father of the military tribunal designed to try enemy combatants. He did so, arguing that they had the capacity to act quickly, to gather intelligence through interrogation, and to prevent confidential life-saving information from becoming public. It was also President Lincoln who declared martial law and who suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus...
...The Iraq War resolution gives the President the authority to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.” And the Patriot Act, among many significant changes, included enhanced FISA surveillance of foreign nationals. Combined with his constitutional powers, the president clearly has the legal authority to carry out this surveillance....
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/HoraceCooper/2005/12/21/179800.html
Privacy hypocrites
By Michelle Malkin Dec 21, 2005
Allow me to sum up the homeland security strategy of America's do-nothing brigade, led by the armchair generals at The New York Times and ACLU headquarters: First, bar law enforcement at all levels from taking race, ethnicity, national origin and religion into account when assessing radical Islamic terror threats. (But continue to allow the use of those factors to ensure "diversity" in public-college admissions, contracting, and police- and fire-department hiring.)...http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/michellemalkin/2005/12/21/179926.html
From the king of torture and creator of rape rooms...
Saddam Says He's Been Beaten in Detention
Dec 21 BAGHDAD, Iraq - After several hours of quietly listening to testimony, Saddam Hussein launched into an extended rant at his trial Wednesday, alleging that he had been beaten "everywhere on my body" while in detention...
"Yes I have been beaten, everywhere on my body. The marks are still there," Saddam told the court, without saying who had allegedly beaten him. "And I'm not complaining about the Americans because I can poke their eyes with my own hands." http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/21/D8EKO3OG4.html
Dec 20 ODESSA, Texas - Residents at the Deerings Nursing Home have a very special secret Santa _ 99-year-old Sybil Rice. Rice, who lives on her own, makes gift baskets for the residents. On Monday, she and her family delivered 70 baskets to residents. "I think it's quite unusual _ she's doing it for people younger than she is," Nina Rice, her 72-year-old daughter-in-law, said in a story in Tuesday's Odessa American. "She shops on her walker and makes these sacks (for residents). She buys sugar-free things (for diabetics) and until this year, she has also baked sugar-free cakes."
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/20/D8EKBJK80.html
Xmas
Xmas (or X-mas) is an abbreviation for Christmas. It is derived from the word ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, transliterated as Christos, which is Greek for Christ. Greek is the language in which the whole New Testament was written.
Originally, in "Xmas", X represented the Greek letter χ (see chi). It was pronounced with an aspirated [kh], which is the first letter of Christ's name in Greek. An upper-case χ has the same shape as a Latin alphabet letter X, hence the abbreviation "Xmas".
It seems Christmas has been abbreviated for at least the past 1,000 years...
...many people believe that the term is often used as a tool by some to "take Christ out of Christmas" as a means of secularization or a vehicle for pushing political correctness. This notion is greatly disputed....
...In ancient Christian art χ and χρ (Chi Ro--the first two letters in Greek of Christos) are abbreviations for Christ's name. In many manuscripts of the New Testament and icons, X is an abbreviation for Christos, as is XC (the first and last letters in Greek, using the lunate sigma); compare IC for Jesus in Greek. The Oxford English Dictionary documents the use of this abbreviation back to 1551, 50 years before the first English colonists came to North America and 60 years before the King James Version of the Bible was completed. At the same time, Xian and Xianity were in frequent use as abbreviations of "Christian" and "Christianity".
The abbreviation is widely but not universally accepted; some view it as demeaning to Christ, whilst others find it helpful to use in text messages and emails to save space. ..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas
Sounds like Tolkien's Orcs...
Stalin's half-man, half-ape super-warriors
THE Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.
Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.
According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."
In 1926 the Politburo in Moscow passed the request to the Academy of Science with the order to build a "living war machine". The order came at a time when the Soviet Union was embarked on a crusade to turn the world upside down, with social engineering seen as a partner to industrialisation: new cities, architecture, and a new egalitarian society were being created.
...Mr Ivanov was highly regarded. He had established his reputation under the Tsar when in 1901 he established the world's first centre for the artificial insemination of racehorses.
Mr Ivanov's ideas were music to the ears of Soviet planners and in 1926 he was dispatched to West Africa with $200,000 to conduct his first experiment in impregnating chimpanzees.
Meanwhile, a centre for the experiments was set up in Georgia - Stalin's birthplace - for the apes to be raised.
Mr Ivanov's experiments, unsurprisingly from what we now know, were a total failure. He returned to the Soviet Union, only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail.
...For his expensive failure, he was sentenced to five years' jail, which was later commuted to five years' exile in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan in 1931. A year later he died, reportedly after falling sick while standing on a freezing railway platform.
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2434192005
Appeals Court Approves Ten Commandments Display in Kentucky
December 20, 2005- A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in favor of keeping the Ten Commandments in a display of historical documents at the courthouse in Mercer County, Ky.
In its 3-0 decision, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an earlier ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and rejected an argument from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that the display in Harrodsburg violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment...
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200512\NAT20051220b.html
State Budgets Boosted by Bush Tax Cuts, Analysts Say
December 21, 2005 - After battling red ink for the past few years, state officials are watching their revenues increase to create budget surpluses, a development some analysts attribute to the financial growth caused by the tax cuts signed into law by President Bush in 2003.
According to the most recent Fiscal Survey of States released by the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO), only three states had to scale back their originally budgeted amounts in 2005 when revenues failed to meet projections.
...Dan Mitchell, senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told Cybercast News Service that "there's no question state government finances are very, very closely tied to the health of the national economy."
Forty-two states ended up collecting more revenue than they expected in the fiscal year that ended in June, the NASBO report states. Alabama, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey and South Dakota saw their revenue projections match the FY 2005 amount budgeted, and only in three states -- Indiana, Missouri and Washington -- did the revenue come in short of the amount originally anticipated in fiscal year 2005.
The good news is expected to continue through the 2006 fiscal year, when proposed state budgets anticipate an average 5.2 percent increase in revenue and spending growth of about 3.8 percent...
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=\SpecialReports\archive\200512\SPE20051221a.html
Hurricane Katrina Hit As Category 3, Not 4
Katrina hit the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane, not a Category 4 as first thought, and New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain likely were spared the storm's strongest winds, the National Hurricane Center said Tuesday…
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/20/D8EKC9S08.html
CARTER EXECUTIVE ORDER: 'ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE' WITHOUT COURT ORDER Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: "Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order":
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo12139.htm
CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SECRET SEARCH ON AMERICANS -- WITHOUT COURT ORDER
Clinton, February 9, 1995: "The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order":
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-12949.htm
[from the] WASH POST, July 15, 1994: …Extend not only to searches of the homes of U.S. citizens but also -- in the delicate words of a Justice Department official -- to "places where you wouldn't find or would be unlikely to find information involving a U.S. citizen... would allow the government to use classified electronic surveillance techniques, such as infrared sensors to observe people inside their homes, without a court order."
Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, the Clinton administration believes the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes."
Secret searches and wiretaps of Aldrich Ames's office and home in June and October 1993, both without a federal warrant.
http://nationalreview.com/york/york200512200946.asp
The Constitution is not a suicide pact
...Ironically, many historians credit the phrase “The Constitution is not a suicide pact” to the Supreme Court. The author of this phrase is none other than that uber-executive Abraham Lincoln. Historian James G. Randall acknowledges, “No president has carried the power of presidential edict and executive order (independently of Congress) so far as [Lincoln] did.”
Remember President Lincoln? While many may not be aware, he’s the father of the military tribunal designed to try enemy combatants. He did so, arguing that they had the capacity to act quickly, to gather intelligence through interrogation, and to prevent confidential life-saving information from becoming public. It was also President Lincoln who declared martial law and who suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus...
...The Iraq War resolution gives the President the authority to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.” And the Patriot Act, among many significant changes, included enhanced FISA surveillance of foreign nationals. Combined with his constitutional powers, the president clearly has the legal authority to carry out this surveillance....
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/HoraceCooper/2005/12/21/179800.html
Privacy hypocrites
By Michelle Malkin Dec 21, 2005
Allow me to sum up the homeland security strategy of America's do-nothing brigade, led by the armchair generals at The New York Times and ACLU headquarters: First, bar law enforcement at all levels from taking race, ethnicity, national origin and religion into account when assessing radical Islamic terror threats. (But continue to allow the use of those factors to ensure "diversity" in public-college admissions, contracting, and police- and fire-department hiring.)...http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/michellemalkin/2005/12/21/179926.html
From the king of torture and creator of rape rooms...
Saddam Says He's Been Beaten in Detention
Dec 21 BAGHDAD, Iraq - After several hours of quietly listening to testimony, Saddam Hussein launched into an extended rant at his trial Wednesday, alleging that he had been beaten "everywhere on my body" while in detention...
"Yes I have been beaten, everywhere on my body. The marks are still there," Saddam told the court, without saying who had allegedly beaten him. "And I'm not complaining about the Americans because I can poke their eyes with my own hands." http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/21/D8EKO3OG4.html
posted by David Bennett | 1:33 PM
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