9th Circuit Court Says “Under God” Is OK

A federal appeals court in San Francisco has ruled against atheist Michael Newdow’s argument that the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance violates the separation of church and state.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, on a 2-1 vote, declared that the wording is constitutional.

Boy Scouts Award Merit Badge For Killing

According to the folks at PETA, “Promoting fishing teaches young people that hooking, maiming, suffocating, and killing is acceptable.”

They are calling on the Boy Scouts of America to retire it’s “Fishing” and “Fish and Wildlife Management” merit badges.

I’m starting to think that the folks at PETA are smoking something, and it ain’t fish.

My son became a Cub Scout as soon as he was old enough, and ended up become an Eagle Scout.

Throughout the years, his troop went on dozens of fishing trips, even going deep-sea fishing a few times, and instead of growing up to become a violent person, he became an EMT.

When I was younger, I spent my summers going fishing on an almost daily basis.

Did I grow up to believe that cruelty to animals was acceptable?

Quite the contrary, one of my fondest dreams is to someday be able to move off of the busy street I live on so that I can get a dog and not have to worry about it getting hit by a car.

I think that this group needs to change their name form People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to Pinheads Exploiting the Truly Asinine.

New Taliban Training Video

From the 2-24 edition of the Pakistan Daily Times:

PARACHINAR: Five Taliban were killed and four others were injured on Tuesday when the explosives that they were planting around their hideout detonated accidentally in Ali Sherzai Dar village, Kurram Agency, officials said.
According to eyewitnesses, the Taliban wanted to blow up the house –vacated by local anti-Taliban leader Ghazi Marjan – due to the security forces’ operation in the area when the explosive material accidentally went-off, killing five of them and injuring four others.
Two of the injured reported to be in critical condition. However, AFP put the death toll at four and reported six Taliban wounded in the explosion. The Taliban had been using the deserted house as a dumping ground for people kidnapped for ransom.

That being the case, the leaders of the Taliban are now requiring all new recruits to watch the following video:

Matt Lauer Asks Stupid Question About Stupidest Person

By now, most of us have heard about the woman who was killed yesterday at Sea World.

You can call me heartless, but how dumb does someone have to be to be a “trainer” for a killer whale?

On the same order as lion tamers, circus folks trying to teach a bear to jump through hoops, someone who does these things for a living is missing a few buttons from their remote control.

Televison “journalists” run a close second.

I’m sitting here at my computer this A.M., watching the news to learn about the blizzard I’m about to be buried under (global warming huh?) when the Today show comes on and Matt Lauer is interviewing a woman who witnessed the whale leaping part-way out of the water and seizing Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau.

Lauer asked Brancheau’s fellow trainer:

“Was it apparent from the start that Brancheau was in trouble?”

A 12 thousand pound behemoth leaps, grabs this young woman by her ponytail, and drags her underwater, and Lauer is wondering if it seemed she was in trouble???

Wow.

And this guy gets paid millions of dollars for this.

Top Global Warming Warming Scientist Admits Errors

The man at the center of the Climategate affair, Professor Phil Jones, says “Oops, my bad!”

Jones may have refused Freedom Of Information Act requests for his data because he lost the paperwork.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

Medieval times?

Just how much greenhouse gas emissions did those knights in shining armor produce anyway?

Professor Phil “Clinategate” Jones has also admitted that there has been no global warming since 1995.

It seems to me that Professor Jones has also admitted that the alarmists ranting about the effects of global warming still don’t know what the hell they are talking about.

 

Source and full story: UK Daily Mail

Judge: Seattle Gun Ban Is Illegal

The law has sided with gun rights advocates who took the city of Seattle and former Mayor Greg Nickels to court over the city’s gun ban.

King County Superior Court Judge Catherine Shaffer on Friday ruled in favor of the plaintiffs – the Second Amendment Foundation, the Citizens’ Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Washington Arms Collectors, National Rifle Association and five individuals – and declared the city of Seattle’s gun ban at public places is in direct violation of Washington state’s firearm pre-emption law.

In issuing the ruling, Shaffer wrote, “Seattle’s Department of Parks and Recreation’s Rule/Policy Number P 060-8.14 (”Firearms Rule”) violates Washington law and on that basis, is null and void.”

The city has been ordered to remove all signage banning weapons from public areas within 30 days.

Last June, Nickels issued an order banning guns on city facilities where children are likely to frequent. The places on the ban list include parks, playgrounds, community and environmental learning centers, sports fields and courts, swimming beaches, pools, water play areas, skate parks and golf courses.

The plaintiffs’ complaint challenged Nickels’ executive order, stating “ownership of firearm is a clearly protected right under the United States and Washington Constitutions.”

The complaint also cited Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna, who issued an opinion in response to the city’s ban, stating state laws “preempts a city’s authority to adopt firearms law or regulations of applications of the general public.”

SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb called Friday’s ruling “a great victory for the rule of law and Washington citizens.”
“It is also a victory for the Legislature,” Gottlieb said, “because this case affirms the intent of lawmakers in 1983 to prevent cities like Seattle from creating a nightmare patchwork of conflicting and confusing firearms regulations.”

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, on the other hand, said he’s “disappointed” in the ruling.

“Cities should have the right to restrict guns in playgrounds, pools and community centers where children are present,” he said. “The court’s ruling was based on a state law, RCW 9.41.290, which preempts Seattle from regulating the possession of firearms. It’s time for the state Legislature to change that law.”

 

Source: KOMOnews

Texas Gay And M Univeristy

My daughter is in college.
The tuition is 36K a year.
And they don’t offer this course of study.
Money well spent.

Some time ago, I recommended Texas A&M University as a good place to get an education. Now that it has added a course in the English Department called “Gay and Lesbian Literature” I need to reconsider. Generally, when a school dedicates entire courses to homosexuality its days are numbered as a university to be taken seriously.

Dr. Krista May now offers a course that “surveys the historical and social constructions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender identities, primarily as they are expressed in the literature of British and American writers.”

That sounds innocent enough. But why spend a semester studying such a narrow aspect of literary works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? The syllabus continues: “The course also investigates earlier literary periods in order to contextualize relatively recent notions of sexual identity by situating them within cultural and historical frameworks.”

Interesting, isn’t it? The issues covered in the class include “literary expressions of homo-social behaviors in ancient Greece and Rome; development of homosexual subcultures in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; construction of female ‘romantic friendship’; the influence of late nineteenth-century sexologists and of Freud; intersections of racial, class, and sexual identities; and postmodern interrogations of identity.”

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Nancy Pelosi: Lousy Catholic, Lousy Congresswoman

The Archbishop of San Francisco takes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to task, and says that as a member of the Catholic Faith, she should start practicing what the church preaches.

I’m not a practicing Catholic, (although I am far from being an atheist) and I have to admit that what Archbishop Niederauer says are tenets anyone would do well to follow.

Ms. Pelosi however, like most liberals, doesn’t let the rules of her religion influence her actions.
After all, there are times when she’s right, and God is wrong.
Such as the issue of abortion.

In a recent interview with Eleanor Clift in Newsweek magazine (Dec. 21, 2009), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about her disagreements with the United States Catholic bishops concerning Church teaching. Speaker Pelosi replied, in part: “I practically mourn this difference of opinion because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that we are all endowed with a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And that women should have the opportunity to exercise their free will.”

Embodied in that statement are some fundamental misconceptions about Catholic teaching on human freedom. These misconceptions are widespread both within the Catholic community and beyond. For this reason I believe it is important for me as Archbishop of San Francisco to make clear what the Catholic Church teaches about free will, conscience, and moral choice.

Catholic teaching on free will recognizes that God has given men and women the capacity to choose good or evil in their lives. The bishops at the Second Vatican Council declared that the human person, endowed with freedom, is “an outstanding manifestation of the divine image.” (Gaudium et Spes, No. 17) As the parable of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, makes so beautifully clear, God did not want humanity to be mere automatons, but to have the dignity of freedom, even recognizing that with that freedom comes the cost of many evil choices.

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House Of Representatives Takes 12 Snow Days

Man, I wish I worked for the government.
Earlier today I watched NYC mayor Bloomberg announce schools would be closed tomorrow.
One day.
And these chuckleheads take a dozen

As Usual, Liberals Take Credit For Things That They Didn’t Do

A person responding to one of our recent articles taking liberals to task left a comment about all the legislation that would not have occured were it not for liberals.

I suppose the implication being that if it weren’t for the efforts of liberals alone, without any input from conservatives, nothing good would have ever happened in America.

In typical liberal fashion, when called upon to account for some of the heinous acts commited by those on the left, this individual took the usual left-wing tactic of simply ignoring the point of the story and responded with a “Yeah, but what about this?” attitude.

We don’t have the patience to correct all of this person’s misconceptions (and he probably still wouldn’t get it anyway), but ther are a couple of glaring examples we would like to highlight.

This person was attempting to put for the proposition that if it were not for liberals, we would not have safe water to drink or clean air to breathe.

Really?

Ever hear of something called the EPA?

Environmental Protection Agency ring any bells?

If you had called the man who was the brainchild behind the EPA and the one who signed the legislation bringing the agency into existence a liberal, you would have bent sent off to an insane asylum.

Former Republican President Richard Nixon may have been many things, but being a liberal was not one of them.

Is that the only thing that conservatives can take credit for regarding the environment?

Who required that Federal agencies follow the law regarding environmental policy, use renewable energy sources, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

That was another man no one in their right mind would label a liberal, George Bush, when in January of 2007 he signed Executive Order 13423.

Another point that this person was trying to make that if it weren’t for liberals America’s labor force would not have a safe work environment.

Fortunately, we have the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Who do we have to thank for OSHA?

Once again, if you called the man who signed the legislation that was the birth of OSHA a liberal, Richard Nixon might have punched you in the nose.

We could go on and on with this, but here is the bottom line:

Maybe somewhere out there exists a liberal who, when they read something and they don’t agree with the premise of the article, can actually addres the issues raised in the article.

Rather than respond with something totally off topic.

I’m not holding my breath.

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