Ted Kennedy and Children's Books...

Since the announcment of Ted Kennedy's new book for children, there has been some speculation as to what other children's books Ted might do in the future.

There is a place on Fark.com where you can see a collection of book covers that we might expect the senator to do for kids in the future. Here is one sample:


Hat Tip to Nealz Nuze for the Fark link.

Here is the souce for the"Teddy's Story Time" CARTOON.

Benjamin Franklin's 300th Birthday...

... was yesterday, the 17th. Who knew?

Hat tip to Tammy Bruce for the picture, you can visit her blog post HERE for some relevant links to websites celebrating the life of, as she calls him: "One of America's most interesting and creative trouble-making revolutionaries".

Texas vs Massachusetts:Which one has higher moral standards?

A Red State vs Blue State comparison and rebuttle

Andrew Sullivan wrote an article called "Conflicted America: The Ironies Abound". It publishes some statistics that imply that the behavior of people in Red states is less moral than the behavior of blue state residents. He uses Texas and Massachusetts as examples.

Yet the way Sullivan presented the statistics was not quite right... and after reading this rebuttle "Red vs. Blue Morality: Figures don't lie, but . . . ." from the blog The View From 1776, it's easy to see why. The rebuttle points out several inconvenient factors Sullivan does not take into account, which skew his analysis. And Sullivan's comparison of the US and Holland, deviating from his Texas/Massachusetts comparison he had been doing, was disingenuous.

I found it interesting to read both. A few things weren't explained, like why Texas has more Titty bars, and even Gay Bath Houses, which are outlawed in Massachusetts. I would guess that is because Texas is simply less regulated by government interference in such... entertainments. Am I right?

Massachusetts Exodus

There is an article by Jeff Jacoby called "Mass. exodus". It details how the population of the state has been declining; why that is unusual, and the possible reasons for it. The facts and figures of the exodus I found quite shocking, but I won't reprint them here, it's worth reading the article. Looking at all the factors, Jacoby maintains the biggest factor in the exodus is an oppressive and demoralizing political culture. An excerpt from the article:

...I suspect that fewer and fewer people want to call Massachusetts home not because of its oppressive winters but because of its oppressive and demoralizing political culture. In the state that produced Michael Dukakis and Sen. Kerry, the concerns of ordinary citizens are so often met with disdain, while the political class lets nothing get in the way of its own appetites and priorities. A state legislature that stays in session year-round? A supreme court that turns same-sex marriage into a constitutional right? Public ''authorities" that answer to no one? In most of America, no way. In Massachusetts, no problem.

On Beacon Hill last week, the big issue for Massachusetts lawmakers was whether tuition should be reduced for illegal aliens at the state's public colleges. On Capitol Hill, the senior senator from Massachusetts was busy implying that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito is a racist and a liar. Is it such a stretch to imagine that an awful lot of Americans look at Massachusetts and think: How can people stand to live there? Or that a fair number of Massachusetts residents eventually decide that they can't stand to live here?

This is a state in which a tax cut can be decisively approved by the voters yet never go into effect. In which grocers can be prosecuted for pricing milk too low. In which archaic blue laws decree when shops may and may not open for business. In which local officials have been known to heatedly object to opening town meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. In which a $2 billion Big Dig ends up costing $14 billion. In which Ted Kennedy keeps getting reelected...

Gosh, it sounds like San Francisco. The voters in SF would vote for something, it would pass, then the city officials would use the courts to prevent it from being implemented, or they would just ignore it and do as they wished anyway. This happened so MANY times, that I eventually stopped voting; I felt my vote was meaningless, so why bother? Our input was unwanted and unwelcomed. It was also a major factor in our selling up and leaving. Who wants to live where votes are meaningless?

Related links:

Another article about the Massachusettes exodus at mensnewsdaily.com.

Another article, emphasizing racial demographics: Mass. exodus: Census shows whites leaving.

Jacoby's editorial at the Boston Globe.

There's No Place Like Home

What I learned from my wife's
month in the British medical system.

BY DAVID ASMAN
Wednesday, June 8, 2005 12:00 a.m. EDT

"Mr. Asman, could you come down to the gym? Your wife appears to be having a small problem." In typical British understatement, this was the first word I received of my wife's stroke.

We had arrived in London the night before for a two-week vacation. We spent the day sightseeing and were planning to go to the theater. I decided to take a nap, but my wife wanted to get in a workout in the hotel's gym before theater. Little did either of us know that a tiny blood clot had developed in her leg on the flight to London and was quietly working its way up to her heart. Her workout on the Stairmaster pumped the clot right through a too-porous wall in the heart on a direct path to the right side of her brain.

Hurrying down to the gym, I suspected that whatever the "small" problem was, we might still have time to make the play. Instead, our lives were about to change fundamentally, and we were both about to experience firsthand the inner workings of British health care.

We spent almost a full month in a British public hospital. We also arranged for a complex medical procedure to be done in one of the few remaining private hospitals in Britain. My wife then spent about three weeks recuperating in a New York City hospital as an inpatient and has since used another city hospital for physical therapy as an outpatient. We thus have had a chance to sample the health diet available under two very different systems of health care. Neither system is without its faults and advantages. To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, there are no solutions to modern health care problems, only trade-offs. What follows is a sampling of those tradeoffs as we viewed them firsthand...

This is a very interesting article. It's a very honest comparison of America's and England's health care systems, acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of both.

You can read the whole thing HERE.

Iran to hang teenage girlattacked by rapists

Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Jan. 07 – An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece.

The state-run daily Etemaad reported on Saturday that 18-year-old Nazanin confessed to stabbing one of three men who had attacked the pair along with their boyfriends while they were spending some time in a park west of the Iranian capital in March 2005.

Nazanin, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident, said that after the three men started to throw stones at them, the two girls’ boyfriends quickly escaped on their motorbikes leaving the pair helpless.

She described how the three men pushed her and her 16-year-old niece Somayeh onto the ground and tried to rape them, and said that she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand.

As the girls tried to escape, the men once again attacked them, and at this point, Nazanin said, she stabbed one of the men in the chest. The teenage girl, however, broke down in tears in court as she explained that she had no intention of killing the man but was merely defending herself and her younger niece from rape, the report said.

The court, however, issued on Tuesday a sentence for Nazanin to be hanged to death.

Last week, a court in the city of Rasht, northern Iran, sentenced Delara Darabi to death by hanging charged with murder when she was 17 years old. Darabi has denied the charges.

In August 2004, Iran’s Islamic penal system sentenced a 16-year-old girl, Atefeh Rajabi, to death after a sham trial, in which she was accused of committing “acts incompatible with chastity”.

The teenage victim had no access to a lawyer at any stage and efforts by her family to retain one were to no avail. Atefeh personally defended herself and told the religious judge that he should punish those who force women into adultery, not the victims. She was eventually hanged in public in the northern town of Neka.

Nice,huh? So that's how the "Religion of Peace" works. Just imagine what a country with a "justice" system like this would do with nuclear weapons? Do we really want to find out?

Source: IranFocus.com Hat Tip to TammyBruce.com.

What Color Should YOUR Blog Be?

Ok, I took this silly test, and here is what I got:

Your Blog Should Be Blue

Your blog is a peaceful, calming force in the blogosphere. You tend to avoid conflict - you're more likely to share than rant. From your social causes to cute pet photos, your life is a (mostly) open book.

What Color Should Your Blog or Journal Be?

Ya think? Ida know...

You can take the quiz yourself HERE.

Democrats tried to smear Alito

Jan 16, 2006
by Star Parker

Racism was once an important issue in this country. Martin Luther King Day reminds us of the time and the struggle. Unfortunately today, a once-important issue has been so politicized and exploited, it has been cheapened into meaninglessness.

The character attacks by Sen. Edward Kennedy and his Democratic colleagues on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito is a good example of this.

The contingent of Democratic senators, with no substantive arguments to question the stellar credentials of Alito, chose instead to smear him, and of course the brush that liberals predictably reach for in smear operations is racism.

The allegations that Alito's brief encounter more than 30 years ago with the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, an organization supposedly unsympathetic to affirmative action, point to his being a closet racist were quickly shown to be absurd. Aside from the far from clear issue of whether the organization itself had racist leanings, investigation into attendance records and minutes showed Alito absent and unengaged. Alito himself, hardly able to remember his involvement, recalled that the organization possibly appealed to him because it opposed the banishment of ROTC from the Princeton campus.

Racism is a serious charge and I certainly would oppose the appointment of a racist to the Supreme Court or to any court.

But the issue here was and is not whether Samuel Alito is a racist. It is obvious he's not, and these Democratic senators know that. The issue is public posturing to cast aspersions on a man's character in order to undermine his confirmation prospects. The race card was pulled out as another tool from the character assassination toolbox used for this end...

(bold emphasis mine) This sort of thing seems to be what the Democrats are all about these days: Posturing and Smearing, without substance. And Star is just warming up ... You can read the whole article HERE.

Iran's Psychotic President Projects

From TammyBruce.com:

Accusing the West of being "in the dark ages," Ahmadinejad (who presides over a nation where tens of thousands of people live in mud huts and rape victims who defend themselves are sentenced to death) did everything today except pound his shoe on the table, while insisting that Poland belonged to him. Oops, that was another fascist. Here is the Reader's Digest/Tammy version of the madman's press conference today:

"We are a peaceful nation who would never want to hurt anyone. We want nuclear energy for electricity, and we don't need nuclear weapons because we don't want to to hurt anyone, but if the West continues to irritate us by saying we want to hurt people, we'll have to hurt them. For implying that we want to hurt people. Which we don't want to do so you better stop it, or we'll hurt you because we are insulted by the accusation that we want to, uh, hurt people."

Yeah, that's about it.

You can read the original post with embedded links (about the rape victims, and the press conference) HERE.

Feinstein says she will notvote to confirm Alito.

The California senator says she is concerned about Alito's conservative record on abortion and deference to executive power. Yet she also acknowledged that he has the credentials to serve on the Supreme court, and is warning the Democrats against a filibuster.

When I first moved to San Francisco in 1981, "DiFi" was mayor. She was a pro-business Democrat, who supported abortion and gun control and all the usual Democrat causes. Yet the Leftists in the city despised her as a "Right Winger". So much so, that they attempted a re-call vote to throw her out of office. It failed, but they railed against her at every opportunity - and they still do!

I got to see her up close once. I was working as a fill-in security guard, almost 25 years ago, when I was assigned to a TV station. They wanted an un-armed guard in a police type uniform to stand outside the studio door of a show they were taping. The show was called "Say What You Think", and I didn't know till I got there what the topic was going to be. It was "Gun Control", and there was going to be a studio discussion between Mayor Feinstein and a Senator, I forget his name, but I believe he was a Republican. There was also a live audience full of SF Moonbats.

They filmed her entry into the studio, she came down the hall surronded by her entorage, while the press took pictures, the hall was narrow, and I think I was on TV for a moment as they walked by me and into the studio.

Anyhow, as the show got under way, I could watch the show on a monitor outside the studio doors. My job was to prevent anyone from entering while they were on the air.

At one point in the show, the Republican senator pulled out a gun, a very primative gun, that had been made by a convict in prison, and confiscated during a cell search.

The senator was trying to make a point; that if you ban guns for law abiding citizens, criminals will still find a way to get them, even if they have to make them themselves, and that they can even do it in prison!

I thought it was a great point, but as soon as he pulled the gun out, the moonbats in the audience went crazy. Some started screaming, others demanded that it be removed immediately because it that it was against the law to bring a gun into a television studio. The senator, he just said something like "For pete's sake, it's NOT loaded!" and proceeded to show the gun off for closeups by the camera.

I really wanted to see it, but by then some moonbats came rushing out of the studio into the hallway. They insisted that I needed to go into the studio, and ARREST the Republican senator, on the Air! Yeah, right... I had to actually explain that I was not going to "arrest" a US senator on the air, with an unloaded "gun" (if it even qualified as such, legally), but THEY could make a citizen's arrest if they wanted to. Of course, that didn't happen.

Ironically, since then, Feinstein herself has been known to brandish guns herself in public, real, HEAVY DUTY guns - with the safety unlocked? - but I haven't heard any moonbats complain about that. I guess things like that only matter when Republicans do them. Or mabye they are afraid, because they know she packs a piece of her own?

Anyhow, that was the closest I ever got to her. When the Democratic Convention happened in SF, where they picked Mondale/Ferraro, I was at a permanent assignment by then and didn't get assigned to the convention, but I knew other guards who did.

One guy told me he had been working double shifts there, and was supposed to be guarding a door to make sure nobody went through it. He was sitting on a stool leaning against a wall, and he fell asleep. Someone poked his arm and woke him up. It was DiFi! He thought, "Oh, SH*T, I'm gonna get fired". But she was smiling, and pointing to the floor. His watch had fallen off. She said something like "I know you don't want to lose that!" and walked away. He thought she was really cool; a powerful woman who didn't need to bully people.

I don't agree with a lot of DiFi's positions. I would not vote for her. I don't doubt that she is in many ways a friendly, agreeable person to be around. Many Republican's invite her to sit on bi-partisan commitees, and she is often invited on conservative TV and radio shows, because she is a makes a good guest because she doesn't mind talking about her positions and answering questions.

Still, she is too far left for me. And yet, inside of San Francisco politics, she is HATED. Nearly all the leftists I knew in SF called her a "sell-out", not to be trusted. And I don't think it's limited to San Francisco, because a lot of leftist media outside of SF and on the internet talk about her in the same way. "She serves on committees with Republicans - she can't be trusted!"


So why am I talking about this? Because I think it's an indicator of something. When sombody like DiFi is called a Right Winger by the Left in this country, it says a lot about how far Left the Left has gone. It strikes me as yet another indicator of how unhinged the Democrats are becoming, when people like DiFi are considered so "conservative", they cannot be trusted.

What IS happening to the Democrats?

Related link: Does Feinstein believe that only the privileged should be legally permitted to protect themselves?

How to Answer the "GWB Lied Us Into Iraq" Bleat

From TammyBruce.com:

Courtesy of Tammy Blog reader/commenter Talkin Horse, I played this on Tammy Radio yesterday and have received lots of requests for it, so here it is--a video which has comments from assorted Dems starting in 1998 endorsing present-day Bush policy on Iraq and their belief (from Albright to both Clintons to Nancy Pelosi) that Saddam had WMD and had to be stopped.

So the next time you hear a Parrot Head bleat "Bush lied us into the war in Iraq!" you'll know how to answer them. Or better yet, make them watch this, and then ask them to explain themselves. That should end up being even more amusing than the Japanese Dog Show!

If the link above won't play for you, go directly to the GOP video source here, and scroll down to "Democrats: Dishonest on Iraq" for a variety of streaming choices...

You can read the entire post with all of the embedded links to the videos HERE.

Sunday Funnies 01/15/06

A Midwestern Perspective on Politics and Economics

DEMOCRATIC

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbra Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICAN

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST

You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST

You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.

You can read more like these HERE. Hat Tip to Boortz.com.


The Train Ride
(aka-the short mystery)

Sitting together on a train, traveling through the Swiss Alps, are a French guy, an American guy, an old Greek lady and a young blonde Swiss girl.

The train goes into a dark tunnel and a few seconds later there is the sound of a loud slap.

When the train emerges from the tunnel, the Frenchman has a bright red hand print on his cheek. No one speaks.

The old lady thinks: The Frenchman must have groped the blonde in the dark, and she slapped his cheek.

The blonde thinks: That Frenchman must have tried to grope me in the dark, but missed and fondled the old lady and she slapped his cheek.

The Frenchman thinks: The American must have groped the blonde in the dark. She tried to slap him but missed and got me instead.

The American thinks: I can't wait for another tunnel, so I can smack that Frenchman again.



For Those Who Need a Chuckle

1. The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

2. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

3. Money can't buy happiness. But it sure makes misery easier to live with.

4. It has recently been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

5. Always remember to pillage before you burn.

6. The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.

7. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

8. If "clothes maketh the man" then it follows that naked people have little or no influence on society.

9. Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by moving to where you can't find them.

10. The law of Probability Dispersal decrees that whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.

11. Indecision is the key to flexibility.

12. There is absolutely no substitute for a genuine lack of preparation.

13. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

14. The facts, although interesting, are usually irrelevant.

15. The careful application of terror is also a form of communication.

16. Things are more like they are today than they ever have been before.

17. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

18. Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.

19. All things being equal, fat people use more soap.

20. If you can smile when things go wrong then you have someone in mind to blame.

21. One-seventh of life is spent on Monday.

22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.

23. This is as bad as it can get -- but don't bet on it.

24. Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty but only the pig enjoys it.

25. The trouble with life is that you are halfway through it before you realize it's a "do it yourself" thing.

26. Drink varnish and you'll have a lovely finish.

27. We can sympathize with a child who is afraid of the dark, but the tragedy of life is that most people are afraid of the light.

28. If only the good die young then what does that say about senior citizens?

29. Employ teenagers - while they know everything.

30. The best antiques are old friends.

31. Down with gravity!

32. Nobody's perfect and since I'm nobody...!

33. People who eat natural foods die from natural causes.

34. Why is there only one Monopolies Commission?

35. Some day my ship will come in, but with my luck, I'll be at the airport.

36. Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind then it really doesn't matter.

37. When the cat's away there are fewer hairs on the armchair.

38. An expert is nothing more than an ordinary person away from home.

49. If you can't be kind, be vague.




The Positive Side of Life

Living on Earth is expensive, but it does include a free trip around the sun every year.

How long a minute is depends on what side of the bathroom door you're on.

Birthdays are good for you; the more you have, the longer you live.

Happiness comes through doors you didn't even know you left open.

Ever notice that the people who are late are often much jollier than the people who have to wait for them?

Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside of us.

You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.

Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened.

We could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different colors....but they all exist very nicely in the same box.

A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

Education: Then and Now

Here is a facinating article by Thomas Sowell. He talks about going to an all-black school in Charlotte, N.C. in the 1930s. His family moved to NYC, and Thomas had to struggle to catch up academically, in an all-black school in Harlem. He later joined the Marines, who were very impressed with his high academic scores on their tests, and that other New Yorker's with him also scored high.

Now, many years later, kids in Charlotte score much higher than kids in NYC and other big American cities, and Thomas has a good look at the reasons WHY. Some exerpts:

...New York City has two kinds of high school diplomas -- its own locally recognized diploma, that is not recognized by the state or by many colleges, and the state's Regents' diploma for high school graduates who have scored above a given level on the Regents' exam.

The Regents diploma is for students who are serious about going on to a good college. Only 9 percent of black students and 10 percent of Latino students receive Regents diplomas.

That a Southern city's school children would now top the list of big city test scores may be due to the fact that the South has not jumped on the bandwagon of the latest fads in education to the same extent as avant garde places like New York City, where spending per pupil is about 50 percent above the national average.

These fads now include the dogma that racial "diversity" improves education, as does emphasis on racial "identity." In reality, a recent study shows that black students who perform well in racially integrated schools are unpopular with their black classmates. They are accused of "acting white," a charge that can bring anything from ostracism to outright violence...

I remember one of our neighbors kids in San Francisco got straight F's in English in his senior year. He was told he might have to attend summer school to make it up before he was allowed to graduate and recieve his diploma. That made sense to me.The kid needs to graduate, but he also needs passing grades, right?

So I was shocked when the school decided that he not only DIDN'T have to attend summer school, but they were going to instead sent him on an overseas trip to Thailand for the Summer! He didn't have the money for the trip, the school, a PUBLIC school, got it for him somehow. He was thrilled of course, but I thought, that's a funny way to teach someone the value of good grades... teach them it doesn't matter. He got his diploma, and a free vacation, with failing grades.

He went on to college at a state univeristy, one outside of the city... and dropped out the first year. He said he didn't like it, but I wondered if he could even keep up?

So WHY are the teachers in SF the most highly paid in California? I've heard some of them say that they don't even believe in testing or grades, that it just interferes with learning. Yeah, right. Testing and grades also help people judge wether or not the teachers are doing their job or not, which I suspect is why they don't "believe" in them.

Here is the Link to Thomas Sowell's excellent article.

Teachers Having SexWith Under Age Students

Is there an epidemic of this occuring? I don't recall things like that happening when I was a kid, they might have happened but it wasn't common, at least not that I knew about.

In this article, there is a list of accused teachers, with links to their cases, it's a rather long list, and it looks like most of them were found guilty. Why is this becoming so prevelent?

You can see for yourself HERE.

Under Clinton, NY Times calledsurveillance "a necessity"

The controversy following revelations that U.S. intelligence agencies have monitored suspected terrorist related communications since 9/11 reflects a severe case of selective amnesia by the New York Times and other media opponents of President Bush. They certainly didn’t show the same outrage when a much more invasive and indiscriminate domestic surveillance program came to light during the Clinton administration in the 1990’s. At that time, the Times called the surveillance “a necessity.”...

Talk about double-standards and media bias. Yet that is all too typical of the NYT. I agree with the author's conclusion regarding the NYT at the end of this piece. You can read the whole thing HERE.

What About Questioning A Kennedy?

Oops I forgot, that's not allowed. Why IS that?

I grew up in Connecticut. When I went to college in Boston, I noticed that the locals talked about all the Kennedy's like they were Gods. I made the mistake of asking some of my dorm mates, who were Massachusetts natives, "What is so special about the Kennedy's? Especially Ted Kennedy?

There was stunned silence. I hadn't even said "Chappaquiddick" or "Mary Jo" or anything, when one gal, who was staring at me intently, began to quiver and shake, and started to scream at me: "He's a Kennedy! He's a KENNEDY!! HE'S A KENNEDY!!!"

Apparently, I just needed it shouted into my brain repeatedly, untill I finally understood. I DID come to understand, that it was not a good question to ask Massachusetts natives, unless I wore earplugs first. Someone told me there was a local museum with John Kennedy's toothbrush in it that I really must go and see... I stopped asking Kennedy questions, and moved to California instead.

Since then, I've seen Ted Kennedy ask a lot of people questions, and question a lot of things.

Many people feel Ted ought to be asked questions rather than be asking them. Like about Mary Jo Kopechne, who drowned in his car... oops, not drowned, SUFFOCATED, in a small amount of air, because nobody came to rescue her in time because they didn't know she was there because Ted didn't tell anyone until it was too late...
Now, Ted is comming out with a new Children's book, featuring his Portuguese Water Dog, "Splash". It will be called "My Senator and Me: A Dogs-Eye View of Washington, D.C."

Some people have said they think choosing a Water dog named "Splash" was kinda rude and thoughtless, considering... you KNOW.


But really, why should it be? You need to remember, Ted gets to ASK the questions, not have to ANSWER them. That being the case, he really doesn't have to worry about being insensitive about... you KNOW.

Tammy Bruce made an interesting comment about Ted Kennedy during her talk on C-Span2. She said something like, "Nobody should be suprised that Ted Kennedy wants to the US to pull out of Iraq, because he has a history of abandoning people in need."

You can see photos of where it happened HERE:

Excerpt: Remember these images the next time that alcoholic, murdering, pompous asshole, Ted Kennedy talks about being morally outraged about anything.

You can read more about the accident and cover-up HERE.

Here is an informative post about Kennedy from The Chatterbox Chronicles, with embedded source links.

SHAME, SHAME ON THE DEMS

From Michelle Malkin's blog:


Excerpt:
...I have many differences with Sen. Graham, but thank God for his show of decency and humanity today. Now, where are the apologies from Sens. Schumer, Kennedy, Biden, Feingold, and the rest of smear merchants?
You can see more (including transcripts and video clips)HERE.

Public Schools Are Cheating the Children

(The following is a very compelling argument in favor of school choice, showing how even Europe allows competition in education, with good results)

By John Stossel

Excerpts:

Last week, Florida's supreme court ruled that public money can't be spent on private schools because the state constitution commands the funding of only "uniform . . . high-quality" schools. How absurd. As if government schools are uniformly high quality. Or even mostly decent.

Apparently competition, which made even the Postal Service improve, is unconstitutional when it comes to public education in Florida...

...At age 10, students from 25 countries take the same test, and American kids place eighth, well above the international average. But by age 15, when students from 40 countries are tested, the Americans place 25th, well below the international average. In other words, the longer American kids stay in American schools, the worse they do. They do worse than kids from much poorer countries, like Korea and Poland.

This should come as no surprise since public education in the USA is a government monopoly. If you don't like your public school? Tough. If the school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it's good or bad.

Government monopolies routinely fail their customers.

Kaat Vandensavel runs a Belgian government school, but in Belgium, school funding follows students, even to private schools. So Vandensavel has to work hard to impress the parents. "If we don't offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school." That pressure makes a world of difference, she says. It forces Belgian schools to innovate in order to appeal to parents and students. Vandensavel's school offers extra sports programs and classes in hairdressing, car mechanics, cooking, and furniture building. She told us, "We have to work hard day after day. Otherwise you just [go] out of business."

"That's normal in Western Europe," Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. "If schools don't perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S."

Vandensavel adds, "America seems like a medieval country . . . a Communist country on the educational level, because there's no freedom of choice -- not for parents, not for pupils." ...

You can read the complete article HERE.

Create an e-annoyance, go to jail

By Declan McCullagh

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.

It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.

This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.

"The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else." ...

You can read more HERE.

Conservatives call for return to core Republican principles

By Edward Alden in Washington

Excerpts:

...At the top of the conservative reform agenda is an end to the practice of earmarking, in which members can secretly insert into huge spending bills billions of dollars in projects for favoured companies or other constituents – many of whom in turn donate to the lawmakers’ re-election funds. While the practice is not new, it has mushroomed since Republicans captured Congress. Last year 15,000 earmarks were added into various spending bills...

...The conservatives are also hoping to reform the congressional budgeting process by sharply reducing the use of “emergency” spending bills, such as those that have paid for the war in Iraq and rebuilding following Hurricane Katrina. They would also reform House rules to allow more challenges to spending bills that exceed agreed budget targets, and to ensure that such bills can be carefully reviewed by lawmakers before votes are held...

You can read more HERE.