May 27, 2006
Secretary Rumsfeld Delivers Memorial Day Message
“On this Memorial Day, we again pause to remember and to honor those who dedicated their lives to the service of others.
“From the first citizen soldiers who stood fast to defend their homes at Lexington and Concord, to the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines securing our liberty and our way of life today, our country has been truly blessed by those who stepped forward to say, “send me.”
“Theirs is a noble calling that founded a nation, drove back the forces of Fascism, Communism, and terrorism, and made historic advances in the cause of human freedom.
“Their service strengthens our will to persevere through every challenge. They remind us of what it means to be an American.
“So to all of those serving our country today, know that we are deeply grateful to you and to your families. May God bless you. And May God bless our wonderful country.’
--------------------
What a progressive judge!! Whatever happened if you can't do the time don't do the crime...?
District Judge: Man Is Too Short for Prison
May 25 -SIDNEY, Neb.- A judge said a 5-foot-1 man convicted of sexually assaulting a child was too small to survive in prison, and gave him 10 years of probation instead.
His crimes deserved a long sentence, District Judge Kristine Cecava said, but she worried that Richard W. Thompson, 50, would be especially imperiled by prison dangers.
"You are a sex offender, and you did it to a child… But that doesn't make you a hunter. You do not fit in that category" the judge said
Thompson will be electronically monitored the first four months of his probation, and he was told to never be alone with someone under age 18 or date or live with a woman whose children were under 18. Cecava also ordered Thompson to get rid of his pornography.
He faces 30 days of jail each year of his probation unless he follows its conditions closely.
"I want control of you until I know you have integrated change into your life," the judge told Thompson. "I truly hope that my bet on you being OK out in society is not misplaced."
(Gambling with other peoples children is like gambling with other peoples money…what have you got to lose?)
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/25/D8HQP7F82.html
Telephone tax to fund Spanish-American War finally repealed 108 years later
5/26/2006- Starting in July, you'll be seeing the cost of your land-line phone service drop a bit... Since 1898, the US government has collected a 3 percent tax on all long distance phone calls. This shows up on your bill as "federal excise tax," and was enacted to fund the Spanish-American War. Although the war itself ended over a century ago, the tax remained. This week, Congress and the Treasury Department finally caved in to years of pressure from consumer advocacy organizations and businesses, and announced that the tax will end on June 30, 2006. A similar tax on local calls will remain in place for now.
Not only will the tax be repealed, but the government's take from it for the last three years will be returned to consumers sometime in early 2007...
...it illustrates the practical difficulty in getting a tax repealed. Once in place, revenue streams are not easily conceded...one has to wonder just how many other obsolete taxes are still on the books...
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060526-6928.html
Schools Hold Separate Graduations for Homosexual Students
May 25, 2006 (AgapePress) - USA Today reports that a growing number of colleges and universities are holding so-called "lavender graduations" to honor their "gay," lesbian, and transgendered graduates...
At the lavender graduations, students are often given awards and typically receive rainbow-colored tassels to put on their mortarboards during their commencement activities.
...while these ceremonies are often touted as celebrations of cultural diversity and equality...Jason Mattera with the Virginia-based Young America's Foundation (YAF) observes, "I thought the homosexual agenda was just 'Leave us alone,' right? That's what they're saying: 'Oh, we don't want the government involved in our lives. We just want to be treated normally.' Well, here is an obvious example where they're looking for special treatment."
But rarely, the YAF spokesman points out, does any group of students get its own graduation ceremonies as a separate class. "Imagine," he says, "if the Christian club at any of the schools mentioned -- let's take the University of North Carolina -- if the Christian club gathered together and said, 'We want a separate ceremony in which we were going to read passages from Leviticus and passages from Rick Santorum's It Takes a Family.'
"Not only would they have been probably flogged by the diversity deans and multicultural deans on the college campus," Mattera asserts, "but they would be [charged with] hate speech incidents..."
...the idea of lavender graduations is not a very inclusive one, since the schools that hold these separate ceremonies are in effect promoting segregation. Nor, he asserts, do such ceremonies truly respect homosexual students by honoring their achievements.
...If these and other colleges and universities are truly interested in equality, Mattera suggests, they could show it by doing away with race-based preferences and special rights for certain classes of students. And instead of trying to ring in a new, so-called "civil rights era" for homosexuals, he says, schools need to stop segregating people on the basis of sexual behavior.
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/5/252006e.asp
Capitol police reopen Rayburn building
5/26/06- A U.S. House of Representatives office building was closed for five hours on Friday in a security alert, but after a floor-by-floor search police said possible gunshot sounds had apparently turned out to be noise from construction work...
"...there were some workers who were working in the area of the Rayburn garage, in the elevator area. And doing their routine duties, they made some sort of a noise that sounded like shots fired," said police spokeswoman Kimberly Schneider.
...One staffer was taken to the hospital after suffering a panic attack…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060526/ts_nm/congress_gunfire_lockdown_dc
Poll: 51 percent of Floridians OK drilling 100 miles from shore
5/25/06- Floridians support lifting a ban on oil drilling 100 miles or more from the state's Gulf Coast beaches by a 51 to 42 percent majority, and many say rising gasoline prices have influenced their approval, a poll released Thursday showed.
Such support stunned environmentalists, who have counted on opposition from Florida and other coastal states to deflect growing sentiment for offshore drilling among inland and oil state politicians... (Why not drill 100 miles off shore? Cuba is going to drill within sight of our coast…)
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/14666771.htm
Sherpas clamber to rescue Australian on Everest
05/26/2006 12-strong team of sherpas clambered up Mount Everest today to rescue a well-known Australian climber given up for dead near the world's highest peak yesterday only to be found clinging to life by another climber.
…Another member of the same team, a visually-impaired German called Thomas Weber, stopped 165ft short of the 29,028-ft summit and also died during the descent yesterday.
Their deaths, and that of another climber from a different team on the same day, brought the number of fatalities on the Himalayan mountain so far this season to 15 - the most ever.
One of the deaths, that of the British mountaineer Dave Sharp, proved especially controversial when it emerged that no less than 40 climbers had passed Mr Sharp as he lay dying. They included Mark Inglis, a double amputee from New Zealand who was rebuked by his countryman, Sir Edmund Hillary, the mountain's original conqueror.
This morning, however, news came that an American climber had found the Australian still alive and given him oxygen and warm tea. Duncan Chessell, another Australian mountaineer, said that Mr Abramov immediately sent off a rescue mission.
"Alex Abramov immediately dispatched a team of 12 sherpas to re-ascend with fresh oxygen and stretcher," said Duncan Chessell, another Australian mountaineer...
Since so many want to get to the top of Everest maybe they should just install a chairlift…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2198691,00.html
Researcher Gives Google a Thumbs Down on Impartiality
May 25, 2006 (AgapePress) - A public-policy think tank is calling search engine giant Google to task for removing news organizations from "Google News" that have been critical of radical Islam. An official with the organization suggests the popular Internet website is practicing censorship and exercising a double-standard.
Google has removed sites like New Media Journal and the Jawa Report from its Google News service for what it calls "hate speech" against Islam. Sonia Arrison, director of technology at the Pacific Research Institute, points out the move was made at the same time Google was urging Congress to pass Internet neutrality legislation.
"It's somewhat ironic that Google is trying to censor some things from its search engine at the same time as it's making this very public plea for something called net neutrality, where it's trying to use Congress and legislation to regulate the Internet so that censorship doesn't happen," Arrison notes. "So the question is, what's really going on here with Google and net neutrality and censorship?"
She points out that Google is one of several search engines that have agreed to censorship in Communist China. "They recently agreed to censor a bunch of stuff in China, which led to a lot of outrage over here in America -- but nothing changed," says Arrison, adding that Google is not alone in this instance. "Yahoo and Microsoft are also over there censoring things for the Chinese government as well."
According to Arrison, Google has also given large sums of money to Democratic candidates in the U.S., raising concerns that more conservative websites might be removed from the search engine because of their content…
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/5/252006g.asp
U.N. making homeschooling illegal?
Threat seen from U.S. judges who bow to child-rights treaty
May 27, 2006 - A U.N. treaty conferring rights to children could make homeschooling illegal in the U.S. even though the Senate has not ratified it, a homeschooling association warns.
Michael Farris, chairman and general counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association, or HSLDA, believes the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child could be binding on U.S. citizens because of activist judges, reports LifeSite News.
Farris said that according to a new interpretation of "customary international law," some U.S. judges have ruled the convention applies to American parents.
"In the 2002 case of Beharry v. Reno, one federal court said that even though the convention was never ratified, it still has an impact on American law," Farris explained, according to LifeSiteNews. "The fact that virtually every other nation in the world has adopted it has made it part of customary international law, and it means that it should be considered part of American jurisprudence."
The convention places severe limitations on a parent's right to direct and train their children, Farris contends.
The HSLDA produced a report in 1993 showing that under Article 13, parents could be subject to prosecution for any attempt to prevent their children from interacting with material they deem unacceptable.
Under Article 14, children are guaranteed "freedom of thought, conscience and religion," which suggests they have a legal right to object to all religious training. Further, under Article 15, the child has a right to "freedom of association."
"If this measure were to be taken seriously, parents could be prevented from forbidding their child to associate with people deemed to be objectionable companions," the HSLDA report explained.
Farris pointed out that in 1995 the United Kingdom was deemed out of compliance with the convention "because it allowed parents to remove their children from public school sex-education classes without consulting the child."
Farris argues, according to LifeSiteNews, that "by the same reasoning, parents would be denied the ability to homeschool their children unless the government first talked with their children and the government decided what was best. This committee would even have the right to determine what religious teaching, if any, served the child's best interest."
Offering solutions, Farris suggests Congress use its power to define customary law and modify the jurisdiction of federal courts.
"Congress needs to address this issue of judicial tyranny by enacting legislation that limits the definition of customary international law to include only provisions of treaties that Congress has ratified," he said.
Farris also suggested Congress could pass a constitutional amendment stating explicitly that no provision of any international agreement can supersede the constitutional rights of an American citizen.
He pointed out two such amendments have been proposed in Congress.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50395
U.S. economy soars during the 1st quarter
May 26, 2006- The economy sprinted during the opening quarter of 2006 but may slow to a more leisurely jog through the rest of the year.
Economic activity zipped ahead at a 5.3% pace in the January-March period, even speedier than initially thought. But a less energetic housing market and high energy prices are taking out some of the oomph.
"I think we sort of had the last hurrah for the economy for a while," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight. "We aren't going to see this kind of growth for a bit. We will see softening in the economy, but there's no reason to be pessimistic."
The figure released by the Commerce Department on Thursday showed gross domestic product during the January-March quarter surpassing the 4.8% annual rate estimated a month ago. It marked the strongest growth spurt in 2 1/2 years. The upgrade mostly reflected stronger U.S. exports and better inventory building by businesses.
...Economists predict economic growth in the April-June quarter probably will slow to a pace of 3% to 3.5%, which would still be decent. The performance of the housing market and energy prices will play key roles in shaping the ultimate outcome.
In the final quarter of 2005, the economy grew at a feeble 1.7% pace. Fallout from the gulf coast hurricanes, including high energy prices, prompted people and companies to tighten their belts.
Consumers and businesses regained their appetite for spending and investing in the first quarter, a major factor underpinning the brisk pace of growth logged by the economy.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060526/BUSINESS07/605260331
David Bennett <><
posted by David Bennett | 4:01 AM
<< Home