- EverVigilant.net - "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran
Are cops supposed to protect and serve the community or the interests of the ruling elite? Well, when they start arresting reporters on public sidewalks for photographing politicians and VIP donors, one cannot help but wonder. (video)
Why do so many Christians seem to exhibit blind allegiance to party and country? Why do so many believers seem to think that our hope hinges on voting the right candidates into power?
As Dr. David Alan Black notes in his latest essay:
God's will hic et nunc is not to improve the American Way of Life. Politics is a false god if ever there was one. God or Mammon. Jesus or Julius. We must simply decide.
Jesus tells us, "Make disciples of all nations." I don't know about you, but I'll stick with the transforming power of the cross, which alone can lay the foundation for "real change," a "new beginning," or whatever other slogans the candidates and their parties will hype this election year.
"The transforming power of the cross." Talk about change we can believe in!
If the Republicans are touting John McCain's record as a war hero, using his status as a prisoner of war to drum up patriotic sympathy, shouldn't someone point out the fact that there was no declared war going on at the time of McCain's capture? I guess it's just one of those technicalities that people are expected to overlook.
It seems the Bush administration is close to an agreement with the Iraqi government concerning the U.S. occupation:
A final draft of a military pact governing U.S. forces in Iraq will be presented to the war-torn country's highest authorities on Friday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said on Thursday.
"We are very close, we have a text, but not the final agreement. Everything has been addressed," Zebari told reporters after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Baghdad.
The draft will now be considered by the Political Council for National Security on Friday a strategic body which includes the president, the prime minister and the chiefs of all political parties.
Isn't it interesting that no one is drawing attention to the fact that under the Constitution the president's treaty-making powers are only granted "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate" (Article II, Sec. 2), and ratification requires that "two thirds of the Senators present concur." But since when has this (or any other) administration worried about constitutional limitations on executive power?
Chuck Baldwin spells out John McCain's "pro-life" position:
John McCain openly embraces embryonic stem cell research. In 2000, he boldly said he did not favor the overturn of Roe v. Wade. John McCain was a member of the infamous "Gang of 14" senators from both parties whose purpose was to oppose pro-life, strict constructionist judges.
Speaking of judges, John McCain voted for the pro-abortion justice, Stephen Breyer, and the radical, pro-abortion, ACLU attorney, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So much for the argument that we need John McCain for the sake of appointing conservative justices to the Supreme Court. For that matter, Republican appointments dominated the Court that gave us Roe v. Wade and the one that later gave us Doe v. Bolton. Proving, once again, that the Republican Party, as a whole, has no real commitment to the life issue.
John McCain also gave us McCain-Feingold. This is the law that keeps pro-life or pro-Second Amendment organizations from broadcasting ads that mention a candidate by name 30 days before a primary election or 60 days before a general election. This proves that John McCain believes neither in the right to life nor the right to keep and bear arms. (This is one reason why the Gun Owners of America gives McCain a grade of F.)
In a debate with George W. Bush in May of 2000, John McCain attacked Bush's support for the pro-life plank in the Republican Party. Still today, John McCain believes that babies who are conceived via rape or incest should be murdered. I remind readers, however, that there are no "exceptions" in the womb, only babies.
If all of the above is not enough, as a senator, John McCain has repeatedly voted to fund pro-abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood with federal tax dollars. In fact, McCain has voted to use federal tax dollars to support abortion providers at home and overseas. Yes, this "pro-life" senator (along with "pro-life" President, George W. Bush) has significantly increased federal spending for abortion providers to levels eclipsing even the appropriations authorized by President Bill Clinton and his fellow Democrats.
If you consider yourself pro-life and still intend to vote for McCain, go ahead. Just don't fool yourself into thinking that you're actually taking a step toward ending America's abortion holocaust.
Led by the likes of emergent guru Brian McLaren, professing Christians are lining up behind Barack Obama:
They call themselves the Matthew 25 Network. Here is their mission statement:
The Matthew 25 Network is a community of Christians -- Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, and Evangelical -- inspired by the Gospel mandate to put our faith into action to care for our neighbor, especially the most vulnerable.
The election of our public officials, and the politics they stand for, are a reflection of our core values. We believe that those elected to public office carry an important trust, as their decisions have a profound impact on our nation and our world.
We believe that people of faith should actively participate in the political process as an important avenue for social change. We are called by our faith to engage in the world as it is, while we seek after and hope for God's Kingdom.
Therefore, while no elected official will be without flaw, we come together as individuals to support candidates for public office who share the values of the Matthew 25 Network: promoting life with dignity, caring for the least of these, strengthening and supporting families, stewardship of God's Creation, working for peace and justice at home and abroad, and promoting the common good.
The group takes its name from Matthew 25:40: "I tell you the truth, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." I find this ironic given the fact that Senator Obama is rabidly pro-abortion and stands behind Roe v. Wade 100%. Try as I might, I just can't imagine supporting someone who sees the infanticide going on in this country (49 million dead and counting) and thinks there's nothing wrong with it.
To be fair, Republican Christians aren't off the hook either. Their candidates of choice -- George W. Bush, John McCain, and every other "conservative" who believes in waging preemptive war on civilian populations -- are anything but pro-life.
Some bloggers think so. During the recent Civil Forum at Saddleback Church, Senator John McCain related an experience from his days as a prisoner of war in Vietnam:
It was Christmas Day, we were allowed to stand outside of our cell for a few minutes, and those days we were not allowed to see or communicate with each other although we certainly did. And I was standing outside for a few minutes, outside my cell. He came walking up. He stood there for a minute and with his handle [sic] on the dirt in the courtyard he drew a cross and he stood there and a minute later, he rubbed it out and walked away. For a minute there, there was just two Christians worshiping together. I'll never forget that moment.
And here's what Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago:
Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.
As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.
Emily Feder writes, "I was recently stopped by Homeland Security as I was returning from a trip to Syria. What I saw in the hours that followed shocked and disturbed me." Read her entire account here.
After what we've done to Iraq and numerous other nations over the years, what right do we have to condemn Russia for its actions against neighboring Georgia? As Dave Black notes, things have changed since Jefferson's time:
The hypocrisy is appalling, at least to me. That we have become a global hyperpower with imperial ambitions should cause Americans to weep. ...
... Welcome, friends, to a unipolar world in which America allows no peer competitor. A world in which the right of aggression is reserved only to the United States and perhaps a handful of its chosen clients. A world in which lies become truth if repeated often enough. A world in which virtuous declarations of intent suffice to lull a passive citizenry to sleep. A world in which countries with atrocious human rights records are coddled because they support our "war on terror." A world of moral hypocrisy and political double standards.
America's greatest threat comes from a complacent populace who would sit back and do nothing while our own civil magistrates surrender our nation's sovereignty and independence to international interests.
Think about it: 232 years after Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, and after our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to defend that document, our nation's leaders from both major parties are in the process of ceding America back to the kind of global empire from which we fought to break free.
A Texas school district will let teachers bring guns to class this fall, the district's superintendent said on Friday, in what experts said appeared to be a first in the United States.
The board of the small rural Harrold Independent School District unanimously approved the plan and parents have not objected, said the district's superintendent, David Thweatt.
School experts backed Thweatt's claim that Harrold, a system of about 110 students 150 miles northwest of Fort Worth, may be the first to let teachers bring guns to the classroom.
Thweatt said it is a matter of safety.
"We have a lock-down situation, we have cameras, but the question we had to answer is, 'What if somebody gets in? What are we going to do?'" he said. "It's just common sense."
Yes, such a solution makes so much sense that a lot of people are bound to have a problem with it.
In all of the hubbub surrounding the alleged discovery of Bigfoot, did you stop to think how odd it is that members of the mainstream media will go out of their way to discredit stories like this, but will swallow without question equally fantastic and sensationalized claims pertaining to things like global warming, weapons of mass destruction, and Barack Obama?
Get your popcorn ready. Things are about to get interesting:
Senator Hillary Clinton will have her name included in a roll-call vote at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, a concession aimed at soothing her supporters and bringing peace to the party in the lead-up to the general election.
The planned vote was announced by presumptive nominee Barack Obama's campaign Thursday in a joint statement with Ms. Clinton, and reportedly came after weeks of negotiations between the two camps.
F. William Engdahl's perspective on the Caucasus conflict is one you won't get from the mainstream press:
Russia threatens Georgia, but Georgia threatens Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia looks like a crocodile to Georgia, but Georgia looks to Russia like the cat's paw of the West. Since Saakashvili took power in late 2003, the Pentagon has been in Georgia giving military aid and training. Not only are U.S. military personnel active in Georgia today, according to an Israeli-intelligence source, Debkafile, in 2007 Saakashvili "commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics."
It was reported further, "They also have been giving instruction on military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from Israel. These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian army's preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital Friday."
Debkafile also reported, "Moscow has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia, finally threatening a crisis in bilateral relations. Israel responded by saying that the only assistance rendered to Tbilisi was 'defensive.'"
The Israeli news source added that Israel's interest in Georgia had to do as well with Caspian oil pipeline geopolitics. "Jerusalem has a strong interest in having Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel, Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel's oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean."
This means that the attack on South Ossetia is the first battle in a new proxy warfare between Anglo-American-Israeli led interests and Russia. The only question is whether Washington miscalculated the swiftness and intensity of the Russian response to the Georgian attacks of August 8.
Especially if you own a home-improvement business. From the L.A. Times:
The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved an ordinance Wednesday requiring certain home improvement stores to develop plans for dealing with day laborers who congregate nearby in search of jobs.
The ordinance mandates that proposed big-box stores obtain conditional-use permits, which could then require them to build day-labor centers with shelter, drinking water, bathrooms and trash cans.
Councilman Bernard C. Parks, who first proposed the ordinance four years ago, said that this was just the first phase and that he planned to address existing home improvement stores next. He said the businesses needed to be held accountable for their role in attracting dayworkers.
Exactly how this is the fault of the businesses in question isn't explained. But I wouldn't expect that to matter to those whose political careers are built on class envy.
What do you do if you and a fellow deputy are wounded in a shoot-out with a man who killed his own father? Why, sue the murder victim's widow for $8 million, of course!
The Worcester Telegram reports that Victor Deeb, a retired chemist, was detained by authorities and had his chemicals confiscated because he was conducting scientific research in a residential area. However, since the chemicals in his possession were "no more dangerous than typical household cleaning products," he wasn't cited for anything.
What's next? A ban on home chemistry sets? (Actually, you'd probably better stock up now.)
I especially liked what Marlboro city code enforcement officer Pamela A. Wilderman had to say: "This is Mr. Deeb's hobby. He's still got bunches of ideas. I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation."
Forget the chemicals. Mr. Deeb's real crime? He had ideas!
Congressman Ron Paul canceled his Monday trip to Victoria to stay with his wife, who was in a Houston hospital intensive care unit after being hospitalized Thursday, a Paul spokesperson reported.
Spokeswoman Rachel Mills would not provide further information on Carol Paul’s condition, saying the family wished to keep it a private affair.
Carol Paul, known for her support and interest in Paul's campaigns, was hospitalized for a pre-existing heart condition on Aug. 11, 2007. Doctors implanted a pacemaker, and she recovered without complications.
Yesterday, August 9, marked the 63rd anniversary of the nuking of Nagasaki. Robert Higgs shares his thoughts:
Any "point" the United States government sought to make about its newly devised military power, whether to the Japanese or to the Soviets, had already been made all too well by its devastating explosion of an atomic bomb over Hiroshima three days earlier. The decision to drop the second bomb must be condemned by every decent person as a gratuitous criminal act. The U.S. armed forces had already killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians by fire-bombing the highly flammable houses and other structures in which the people lived and worked. To kill another huge number of people -- men, women, and children, prisoners of war, foreigners, and other innocent persons in the city -- was a war crime, plain and simple. That many Americans continue, even today, to defend this senseless and flagrantly brutal act is shameful.
Though you probably never learned it in school, Nagasaki was the center of Christianity in Japan at the time, and home to the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in the country. The city was, ironically, a haven for Christians who had escaped persecution in other parts of Japan over the centuries.
Despite years of boycotts, schoolyard bans, and banishment from capitol domes, the Southern battle colors are flying, higher than ever.
Indeed, the Tampa Confederate Veterans Memorial and its 139-foot flagpole features one of at least four giant "soldier's flags" flying over bumper-to-bumper interstates in Florida and Alabama. With more planned in Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, and possibly South Carolina, the interstate show of force, experts say, highlights the potential backlash from banning nostalgic symbols from the public square. ...
... [T]here's some evidence that flag proponents have the wind at their back. An attempt last week to reenergize the flag boycott in South Carolina faltered at the NAACP, with one member concluding the effort had lost its steam. Moreover, the NCAA recently got flak from some newspapers for banning championship games in South Carolina and Mississippi, but not in Alabama, which also has Confederate regalia as part of its official symbols.
"A flag may be a simple piece of cloth, but it's much more powerful than that," says John Clark, a political science professor at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. "[And] if you start turning people away, you're talking about a substantial investment in the local economy that's going to disappear."
Still, it's not clear whether the flag is actually that sensitive a topic. The economic effect of NAACP and NCAA boycotts in South Carolina has been minimal, according to state officials.
More recently, a Florida newspaper poll revealed that few drivers found the Tampa flag offensive, which surprised many officials.
Our "representatives" have a sick addiction: They are always intervening (i.e. placing limits on freedom and property) in an attempt to "solve" problems that they helped create in the first place. Washington's resident physician has something to say about that:
Addicts are told the first step to recovery is to admit their problem. To cure this addiction to intervention we have to honestly admit the problem and once and for all kick the habit. That will involve some pain, without a doubt. There is no easy, painless solution to the mess the disastrous economic interventions of the past have wrought. The question is – do we allow some lending institutions to collapse, or do we allow the dollar to collapse? To extend the metaphor, do we endure the temporary discomfort of withdrawal, or do we continue on until there is a fatal overdose? We can delay the agony, but only for a little while, and then we will all end up paying the price for the mistakes of a few.
With the final passage of the Housing Bailout Bill quietly on a Saturday in the Senate, and the President's signature, our government has unfortunately chosen the latter.
We tried to make 'em go to rehab, they said, "No, no, no."
LewRockwell.com's Michael S. Rozeff shares his theory on why the dollar declined:
The value of bank assets fell when the mortgages went bad and housing prices declined. That meant that the assets backing the bank liabilities lost value, and those liabilities include bank deposits or MONEY. As the assets lost value, so did the value of the dollars on the other side of the balance sheet. (The value of assets must equal the value of liabilities + value of capital.)
The Fed did not inflate the money supply during this period. That did not cause the loss in value of the dollar. This loss in value was not a quantity-theory phenomenon. Instead, as the value of the assets backing the dollar declined, so the value of the dollar declined. Even though we have a fiat money system, the dollars that the banks create are matched by the loans they make. They try to make good loans, but in this episode they failed.
Can we look forward to a recovery soon?
The dollar won't recover until the U.S. economy itself recovers and begins producing returns and wealth, because these are the real backing of the dollars in circulation. A reduction in war-making would help the dollar because the resources would then be turned to more productive outlets. Any reduction in the size of government will help the dollar. However, under Obama, that is not at all likely. We will have to wait for a natural recovery of the economy.
First, he said this. Now, he's saying this. See, when you're already offering people free education and free health care, you don't really have to take a stand on reparations.
Who would have ever thought that it was illegal to swim across a lake in the Land of 10,000 Lakes? Tom Kleven found out the hard way (video). In training for an upcoming triathlon, Kleven attempted to swim across Lake Nokomis. When he reached the shore, he was greeted by brave members of the Minneapolis Park Police, whose job it is to harass hardened scofflaw swimmers. He was cited for "swimming too far," and could face a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Since Kleven is a physician who is now guilty of a misdemeanor, he has to report the crime every time he renews his license. All this because he didn't know that in order to swim across a lake he was required to purchase a $115 permit and have a lifeguard can follow him in a boat.
For more on Minneapolis lake regulations, check out Steve Young's commentary in the Star Tribune.
Now, one might expect that clicking on a headline like that would bring up a breaking news report direct from the Pentagon about a recently uncovered Iranian terrorist plot to detonate a nuclear bomb within our borders. Homeland Insecurity would raise the national threat level to "High." (That's Orange, kids.)
No. Instead, you get sheer speculation (i.e. wishful thinking) on the part of the warmongering press:
Iran has carried out missile tests for what could be a plan for a nuclear strike on the United States, the head of a national security panel has warned.
In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee and in remarks to a private conference on missile defense over the weekend hosted by the Claremont Institute, Dr. William Graham warned that the U.S. intelligence community "doesn't have a story" to explain the recent Iranian tests.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that this is what passes for journalism in a country where most people are too lazy to read beyond the headlines.
Homeland Security employees want to have a peek at your files. From CNet.com:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has concocted a remarkable new policy: It reserves the right to seize for an indefinite period of time laptops taken across the border.
A pair of DHS policies from last month say that customs agents can routinely--as a matter of course--seize, make copies of, and "analyze the information transported by any individual attempting to enter, re-enter, depart, pass through, or reside in the United States." (See policy No. 1 and No. 2.)
DHS claims the border search of electronic information is useful to detect terrorists, drug smugglers, and people violating "copyright or trademark laws." (Readers: Are you sure your iPod and laptop have absolutely no illicitly downloaded songs? You might be guilty of a felony.)
This is a disturbing new policy, and should convince anyone taking a laptop across a border to use encryption to thwart DHS snoops. Encrypt your laptop, with full disk encryption if possible, and power it down before you go through customs.
CNet presented a guide to customs-proofing your laptop back in March. You can read it here.
