Tuesday, May 31, 2005
KXYL, Sex Talk & The Golden Calf
It's obvious, after listening to them on the morning show, that "The Watt's Boys" (Phil and his "Golden Calf $$$" James Williamson) would rather you think about the Ford's (D's) from Tennessee than Republicans Mayor West or Jeff Gannon ! Does the "Dumbing Down" begin behind the microphones at Watts Communication ! Come on guys, is the sex talk just about x-posing the D's ? Out of curiosity, when's the last time you guys at Watts got your "darkness" exposed to some
"light" ?
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Mayor West: Not anti-gay, not guilty, not sure about his sexuality
by Joe in DC - 5/31/2005 07:47:00 AM
What a creep.
Matt Lauer did the interview with anti-gay, but not gay, Jim West, the Mayor of Spokane.
There was a pretty tough intro piece detailing all the lurid details of Jim's escapades...and a very heavy emphasis on his anti-gay record.
Stealing a page from Jeff Gannon, Jim wouldn't answer the question about his sexuality. Like Jeff, he invoked the pain this was causing his family. He said this whole mess was especially difficult for his 79 year old family, his other relatives and his ex-wife. Matt asked him how he characterized himself and he saide he wouldn't on national tv.
But we learned during the interview that Jim was not an anti-gay leader. He just voted the way his constituents wanted...that's what it was. It wasn't his fault. Hmmm. LIAR. Remember this tidbit from the Spokesman-Review:
As Spokane's incoming mayor in November 2003, West said he's opposed to extending City Hall benefits to domestic partners, citing the cost. In April 2005, the City Council approved domestic partner benefits in a 5-2 vote, enough to withstand a mayoral veto.
Jim wasn't just a legislator when that happened. He was the Mayor. And, the most of the elected officials in his city supported the measure.
Basically, Jim West hasn't ever done anything wrong so stop being so mean to him. He denied any criminal activity and was adamant that he is a CONSERVATIVE. He kept telling us that.
So, to sum up the interview, he is a CONSERVATIVE man of unclear sexual orientation who never committed any -crimes and was never an anti-gay elected official.
WOW.
source: http://www.americablog.org/
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What happened to Connie and Marion (KXYL Morning Talking Heads) and Watts Communication ? Split up without a send off party. Seems to be a pattern !
Texas Political Priorities !
Lawmakers flunk school test
Agreement on finance sought before court date
By Associated Press
May 31, 2005
AUSTIN - Texas lawmakers accomplished the one job they were constitutionally required to do - passing a state budget.
They also placed more restrictions on abortion, gave Texas voters a say in banning gay marriage and declared the chuck wagon the state's official vehicle during their 140-day session that ended Monday.
But Texas schoolchildren will have to wait.
On the marquee issue of 79th Legislature - pumping more money into public schools while replacing Texas' share-the-wealth education funding system - lawmakers failed to agree.
The education community's focus turns next to the state's high court, which will take up the confounding issue of public school finance in the face of the Legislature's failure to solve the recurring quandary.
Until then, teachers won't get a pay raise, homeowners won't get a school property tax cut and schools won't get money to buy the textbooks they need.
''We're putting our faith in the Supreme Court and hoping they'll rule the way we think they should rule and put a deadline,'' said Clayton Downing, executive director of the Texas School Coalition. ''That's the only way the Legislature reacts.''
Despite a last-minute surge of activity, House-Senate negotiations petered out over the weekend. The two Republican leaders, House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, were at loggerheads, and the finger-pointing began.
''We are all in this together,'' Republican Gov. Rick Perry said, as the final talks were taking place. ''I'm not interested in assigning credit or blame, but getting a good result for taxpayers and schoolchildren.''
State District Judge John Dietz last fall ruled the current system unconstitutional and ordered that school funding problems be fixed by October 2005, or state money for schools would cease. The ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court and a July 6 hearing has been set for oral arguments in the case.
''Basically it looks like we have to limp along until courts deal with this and we get a special session,'' said Richard Kouri, a lobbyist for the Texas State Teachers Association. ''All in all, this was a very disappointing session for public schools.''
The court could uphold the Dietz decision or give the Legislature a deadline.
Gov. Rick Perry could call lawmakers back to Austin for a 30-day special session to take up the issue. But, without an agreement beforehand, or guidance from the court, it's not likely that he will.
Perry met with education leaders from both chambers separately on Monday, discussing possibilities to move forward.
''The governor is encouraging members of the House and Senate to continue working on (the school funding package) and to continue working toward an agreement,'' said Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt. ''If we reach an agreement, the governor will consider bringing the Legislature back. Members made significant progress and were near agreement when the clock ran out.''
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said senators are ready to continue working toward a compromise.
''The Legislature ought to be deciding on school finance, not the courts,'' Dewhurst said. ''I think the people of Texas elected us to come up to Austin and take care of the people's business.''
House Speaker Tom Craddick argued that, since 1948, no school funding bill has been adopted in Texas without a special session or under a court order. The current system, known as Robin Hood, was designed in response to a court order.
Dietz said that because so many districts are at the maximum taxing level without room to generate more tax money, the school property tax amounts to statewide property tax, which is banned by the state constitution. Dietz also said that schools would need about $1,100 more per student to provide an adequate education required by the constitution. That amounts to $4.7 billion.
On Monday, a group of freshmen Democrat lawmakers called for more time to work on the issue.
''As much as each of us would like to get home to our families and our constituents, we believe the governor should issue an immediate call for a special session focused exclusively on public education,'' said Dallas Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchia. ''The negotiations that seemed to begin in earnest only in the last week should continue until we have a resolution.''
The special session Perry called last year failed.
Writers Kelley Shannon and April Castro contributed to this report
http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_state/article/0,1874,ABIL_7974_3818476,00.html
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GOP needs more issues
Without the threats of gay marriage or gay foster parents, what issues will Texas Republicans use to scare us into voting for them?
When they run out of their religious-based agenda, maybe they'll have to address important issues like education, tax reform, protecting the environment and protecting us from lewd cheerleader behavior. (Oops, the cheerleader issue has already been fixed.)
Kudos to another successful Republican-led session of the Texas Legislature.
Roger Gragg, Dallas
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/letters/stories/053105dneditueletters.fd086473.html
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Women Pilots, Brownwood, Sweetwater, N.Y. Aviatrix Miss Neva Paris
Women Pilots, Brownwood, Sweetwater, N.Y. Aviatrix Miss Neva Paris
Originally uploaded by photosteve.
Brownwood Sunsets ?
What Retirees Look For
1. Low Crime Rate
2. Active, clean, safe downtown
3. Good Hospitals
4. Low Overall Tax Rate
5. Mild Climate
6. Friendly neighbors
7. Scenic beauty nearby
8. Low cost of living
9. Good recerational facilities
10. Low housing costs
source: Where to Retire
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Scouting the best places for a sunset
Magazine tours the country, helping retirees decide where to settle
12:11 PM CDT on Saturday, May 28, 2005
By BOB MOOS / The Dallas Morning News
HOUSTON – Mary Lu Abbott has a dream job – she crisscrosses the country in search of the best places to retire.
"It used to be that most people who wanted to retire somewhere else thought of Florida and Arizona as their only options, but that's all changed," she said. "Today Americans are looking just about everywhere."
Ms. Abbott writes for Where to Retire, a Texas-based national magazine that tries to answer a question on more and more people's minds as they approach retirement and consider uprooting themselves.
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On the lookout
A Where to Retire survey found that 92 percent of its subscribers would prefer to live in rural towns or suburbs, with only 8 percent having their eyes set on large cities.
When Ms. Abbott scouts communities for possible profiles, she drops into restaurants, walks around neighborhoods, browses through stores and visits real estate offices.
In all her exploring, she's looking for certain attributes.
"The first is 'eye appeal' – does the town make me want to spend some time there?" she explained.
By that, she usually means natural beauty such as a nearby lake or mountain. But it could also be an attractive, vibrant downtown.
Ms. Abbott then checks on other important qualities such as hospitals, affordable housing, entertainment and low taxes.
"The cost of living is a big factor," she said. "People particularly want to know about taxes – and not just sales and income taxes but also property and inheritance taxes."
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source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/052905dnbusretire.f1211ebc.html
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Your/Their/Our World: Who's selling us out ?
Listen to this as you read the articles posted below.
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"Wal-Mart is the poster child for what's wrong with corporate America," said Louis Malfaro, president of the Austin Central Labor Council. He cited the coalition's independent study, which estimates that each Wal-Mart store costs taxpayers more than $400,000 per year in subsidies for poorly paid, uninsured workers who can't afford health and child care, housing, and even food. According to Texas Health and Human Services Commission data, 4,339 children of Wal-Mart workers were enrolled in the state's Children's Health Insurance Program for low-income kids in February 2005, three times more than the second highest-ranking employer on the list. On the environmental front, Wal-Mart was handed a $3.1 million fine for Clean Water Act violations in May of last year, the largest civil penalty ever assessed for environmental damages. Before that, they had already been fined $1 million in 2000 for virtually identical charges.
The $10-billion profit Wal-Mart chalked up in 2004, however, speaks to the fact that its stores have fans, regardless of the corporation's reputation. Even union members, whose attempts to organize within stores have been about as welcomed by management as a plague of locusts, use their credit cards at Wal-Mart more than any other location, according to Malfaro. And as reported in the Statesman, 5,000 people applied for the 427 jobs available at the new Slaughter Lane store.
So how do you convince big-box lovers that their favorite store isn't always a good corporate citizen and needs to be reined in?
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State budget offers little relief for the poor
Advocates: Legislature's big spending increase mostly benefits others
10:38 PM CDT on Friday, May 27, 2005
By GROMER JEFFERS Jr. / The Dallas Morning News
Araceli Ortiz of Dallas worries about health coverage for sons Sergio (right), 9, and Martin, 10. Still, some say the poor are better off than they were under the state's 2003 budget.
She has missed work ever since being robbed and assaulted in Dallas a few weeks ago. Her husband is unemployed, and she worries about finding health care coverage for her two sons.
She needs help. But advocates for the poor say that despite a big increase in overall spending, many Texans in similar positions won't get much relief out of the Legislature this year.
"I don't get it," said Ms. Ortiz, a 33-year-old East Dallas resident. "The system is not working. They don't help out."
Much of the new spending, advocates argue, is simply making up ground lost in 2003, when the state cut programs to close a $10 billion budget gap. And though much of that has been restored, several other measures could add new troubles for the poor, including potential sales-tax increases and cuts to programs such as those that help low-income Texans pay their utility bills.
"The good news is that things didn't get a whole lot worse," said Eva DeLuna Castro, budget analyst for the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an advocacy group for low-income Texans. "But Texas still doesn't provide enough training for better jobs, let its residents earn more money or have adequate access to child care."
Sen. Steve Ogden, the Bryan Republican who chairs the Senate's Finance Committee, said the Legislature has improved services for the poor.
"If you said the poor and the working class got hit hard because of the portions of the budget that benefited others, [advocates] should be pleased by the improvements made over 2003," Mr. Ogden said. "They may say it's still not enough, but it's a lot better than it has been."
Other lawmakers say that's not good enough, especially considering what lawmakers are doing for wealthier Texans and businesses.
"The people with more money get a decrease in their taxes, and the people who have less money get an increase in the taxes and that's backward," said Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston. "It's not Robin Hood anymore; it's robbing the hood."
Robert Black, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry, said the governor couldn't assess the budget's impact until it is finalized and sent to him, which lawmakers must do in the next few days. Many of the provisions could be tweaked over the weekend.
"Governor Perry has told House and Senate members to get him a budget that reflects the priorities of Texas and has urged them to maintain fiscal discipline while nearing the finish line of the session," Mr. Black said.
A double whammy
Proposals to overhaul state taxes – raising business and sales levies to offset a big cut in school property taxes – have particularly spotlighted the potential blows to the state's have-nots from this lawmaking session.
Many middle-income homeowners would break even or save a little. But the poor would see a double whammy – no cuts in property taxes because they rent, and a big blow from the sales-tax hike, which hits the poor hardest because a larger share of their income goes toward consumption.
Ms. Ortiz, for instance, rents a modest East Dallas apartment and probably won't see a property tax benefit passed on by her landlord.
She estimates that she and her husband spend $300 to $500 a month on groceries and supplies. And while food still won't be taxed, they could be paying a half-cent to a full-cent more in tax on other items for their young boys.
"I'm already spending more money than I used to," said Ms. Ortiz, who makes $9.50 an hour as a saleswoman for an auto parts store. "Sometimes we don't have enough to cover everything."
Various studies show that Texans who earn $22,800 or less annually pay the greatest percentage of their income in sales taxes. Those who make up to $41,400 pay the next largest percentage.
Silver lining
It's not all bad news, though. The Senate's tax plan would provide a rebate to Texans receiving government assistance, to ease the blow of the sales-tax hike. And Ms. Ortiz's concerns about health care for her boys could be resolved.
Two years ago, with the budget shortfall looming, lawmakers made eligibility changes that cut 180,000 children from the rolls of the Children's Health Insurance Program, which is designed to help the working poor. Ms. Ortiz had missed the income requirement for the program by $15.
This year, with her husband unemployed, they'll make the cut. And lawmakers have eased enrollment requirements somewhat by agreeing to check families' eligibility once a year, instead of every six months. That will allow families whose income fluctuates by seasons to remain on the rolls longer.
Dental, vision and mental health benefits for children, cut in 2003, were also restored. The state would also spend $55 million to pay for glasses, hearing aids, and mental health and podiatry services for adults on Medicaid.
And Mr. Ogden is pushing for a new sales tax holiday in December, similar to the back-to-school tax-free period.
Still, other funds for the poor were targeted. Lawmakers swept out the System Benefit Fund, which helps the poor with utility bills, and moved the money into the overall budget. That came on top of rate hikes announced by electricity provider TXU.
Rep. Sylvester Turner, a Houston Democrat who jokes that he leads the Poor Man's Caucus in the Legislature, managed to push through a bill that would restore the fund in 2008. But for now, needy residents won't be able to get the 10 percent discounts the fund provides.
Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, also tried to increase stipends used by nursing home residents to buy personal hygiene products. The personal needs allowance is now at $45, down from the level it was at in previous years.
She wants about $13 million to lift the allowance to about $60.
"They're not asking to go to Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue," Ms. Thompson said. "They're asking to go to Wal-Mart."
Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving, suggested concerns about the program were overblown.
"I've got to tell you that I don't spend that much money a month on my deodorant, my toothpaste and my toothbrush and those things," she said. "Isn't this a case of giving them pocket money that's probably more than they need for basic expenditures on a monthly basis?"
E-mail gjeffers@dallasnews.com
TAKING A HIT
Among provisions that will affect the poor:
Health coverage wasn't restored to about 180,000 needy children who were knocked off he Children's Health Insurance Program rolls since 2003.
Lawmakers raided the $150 million Systems Benefit Fund that would give Texans discounts on utility fees and using it for other budget items.
Cuts were made to a program that allocates $6 million to 4,000 welfare recipients who need job training.
A cash assistance program that gives 185,000 poor children a one-time summer payment – cut from $60 to $30 in 2003 – won't be restored to the full amount.
A plan to pay tuition for up to 90 credit hours for some high school students going to state community colleges was scrapped.
Gromer Jeffers Jr.
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/052805dntexpoor.edcc5293.html
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Veterans Left Behind as VA Continues Drastic Cut Backs: VVA
Vietnam Veterans of America
5/27/2005 11:02:33 AM
WASHINGTON, May 27 -- The Budget Resolution passed by both houses of Congress will result in staff reductions in every VA Medical Center at a most inauspicious time—as veterans return from the war in Iraq and as increasing numbers of veterans need care from the system, said Thomas H. Corey, National President of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA).
The impact will be significant among those returning troops who suffer from mental health issues such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), those who have sustained loss of limbs, and other serious injuries.
In addition to devastating decreases in the availability of care for veterans that will result from such budget cuts, the VA seems determined to contest even long-standing disability compensation for PTSD from veterans currently receiving VA benefits and health care. A recent VA Inspector General’s (IG) report concluded that following a brief review of certain grants of service-connected benefits for PTSD, the "subjectivity" involved in such determinations has resulted in over-granting of benefits.
As a result, the VA will be reviewing PTSD grants between 1999 and 2004, with an eye toward revoking benefits if the claim was adjusted incorrectly. "VVA believes that the "subjectivity" offered to the IG report is a euphemism for poor training and quality control of VA adjudication staff.
"We must make it crystal clear to Congress that the budget appropriation for fiscal year 2006 year is at least $3.5 billion less than what is needed to fund the VA medical programs adequately," Corey said. "This is a critical time. Without these resources, veterans will have longer waits to see specialists, much-needed maintenance will be deferred, and medical equipment will not be purchased.
"Together, through the Partnership for Veterans Health Care Budget Reform veterans service organizations will demonstrate against these drastic cutbacks. Veterans’ health care is not a welfare program. It is a benefit earned by rendering honorable service to our country. If we don’t act forcefully now, we will continue to witness the erosion of what was one of the finest health care programs in the nation."
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Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) is the nation’s only congressionally chartered veterans service organization dedicated to the needs of Vietnam-era veterans and their families. VVA’s founding principle is "Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another."
source: http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=2767
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End-Timers & Neo-Cons
The End of Conservatives
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
January 19, 2005
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during 1981-82. He was also Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.
I remember when friends would excitedly telephone to report that Rush Limbaugh or G. Gordon Liddy had just read one of my syndicated columns over the air. That was before I became a critic of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration, and the neoconservative ideologues who have seized control of the US government.
America has blundered into a needless and dangerous war, and fully half of the country's population is enthusiastic. Many Christians think that war in the Middle East signals "end times" and that they are about to be wafted up to heaven. Many patriots think that, finally, America is standing up for itself and demonstrating its righteous might. Conservatives are taking out their Vietnam frustrations on Iraqis. Karl Rove is wrapping Bush in the protective cloak of war leader. The military-industrial complex is drooling over the profits of war. And neoconservatives are laying the groundwork for Israeli territorial expansion.
The evening before Thanksgiving Rush Limbaugh was on C-Span TV explaining that these glorious developments would have been impossible if talk radio and the conservative movement had not combined to break the power of the liberal media.
In the Thanksgiving issue of National Review, editor Richard Lowry and former editor John O'Sullivan celebrate Bush's reelection triumph over "a hostile press corps." "Try as they might," crowed O'Sullivan, "they couldn't put Kerry over the top." There was a time when I could rant about the "liberal media" with the best of them. But in recent years I have puzzled over the precise location of the "liberal media."
Not so long ago I would have identified the liberal media as the New York Times and Washington Post, CNN and the three TV networks, and National Public Radio. But both the Times and the Post fell for the Bush administration's lies about WMD and supported the US invasion of Iraq. On balance CNN, the networks, and NPR have not made an issue of the Bush administration's changing explanations for the invasion.
Apparently, Rush Limbaugh and National Review think there is a liberal media because the prison torture scandal could not be suppressed and a cameraman filmed the execution of a wounded Iraqi prisoner by a US Marine. Do the Village Voice and The Nation comprise the "liberal media"? The Village Voice is known for Nat Hentoff and his columns on civil liberties. Every good conservative believes that civil liberties are liberal because they interfere with the police and let criminals go free. The Nation favors spending on the poor and disfavors gun rights, but I don't see the "liberal hate" in The Nation's feeble pages that Rush Limbaugh was denouncing on C-Span.
In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush.
The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. "You are with us or against us."
This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.
That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal Editorial page, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of the entire concentrated corporate media where noncontroversy in the interest of advertising revenue rules.
Once upon a time there was a liberal media. It developed out of the Great Depression and the New Deal. Liberals believed that the private sector is the source of greed that must be restrained by government acting in the public interest. The liberals' mistake was to identify morality with government. Liberals had great suspicion of private power and insufficient suspicion of the power and inclination of government to do good.
Liberals became Benthamites (after Jeremy Bentham). They believed that as the people controlled government through democracy, there was no reason to fear government power, which should be increased in order to accomplish more good.
The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals' abiding faith in government. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a person's civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof. Thus, preemptive war, which permits the President to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.
There is nothing conservative about these positions. To label them conservative is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.
American liberals called the Brownshirts "conservative," because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts' delusions were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless doctrines.
Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision when I wrote that the US invasion of Iraq was a "strategic blunder."
It is amazing that only a short time ago the Bush administration and its supporters believed that all the US had to do was to appear in Iraq and we would be greeted with flowers. Has there ever been a greater example of delusion? Isn't this on a par with the Children's Crusade against the Saracens in the Middle Ages?
Delusion is still the defining characteristic of the Bush administration. We have smashed Fallujah, a city of 300,000, only to discover that the 10,000 US Marines are bogged down in the ruins of the city. If the Marines leave, the "defeated" insurgents will return. Meanwhile the insurgents have moved on to destabilize Mosul, a city five times as large. Thus, the call for more US troops.
There are no more troops. Our former allies are not going to send troops. The only way the Bush administration can continue with its Iraq policy is to reinstate the draft.
When the draft is reinstated, conservatives will loudly proclaim their pride that their sons, fathers, husbands and brothers are going to die for "our freedom." Not a single one of them will be able to explain why destroying Iraqi cities and occupying the ruins are necessary for "our freedom." But this inability will not lessen the enthusiasm for the project. To protect their delusions from "reality-based" critics, they will demand that the critics be arrested for treason and silenced. Many encouraged by talk radio already speak this way.
Because of the triumph of delusional "new conservatives" and the demise of the liberal media, this war is different from the Vietnam war. As more Americans are killed and maimed in the pointless carnage, more Americans have a powerful emotional stake that the war not be lost and not be in vain. Trapped in violence and unable to admit mistake, a reckless administration will escalate.
The rapidly collapsing US dollar is hard evidence that the world sees the US as bankrupt. Flight from the dollar as the reserve currency will adversely impact American living standards, which are already falling as a result of job outsourcing and offshore production. The US cannot afford a costly and interminable war.
Falling living standards and inability to impose our will on the Middle East will result in great frustrations that will diminish our country.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=76&ItemID=7056
Friday, May 27, 2005
Brownwood Shooting, Domestic Violence & Community Dialogue
Man killed by police after he fatally shot estranged wife
BROWNWOOD, Texas — Brownwood police killed a man today after he fatally shot his estranged wife and then wounded two officers.
Authorities believe the woman recently filed for divorce.
Police Chief Virgil Cowin (COW'-in) says a 9-1-1 call from a residence led to an officer being dispatched to the house.
Authorities say Mona Williams and her college-age daughter walked out to meet the officer as he drove up.
Police say Steve Williams then shot his wife in the head.
Authorities say he fired at his daughter, but missed.
The officer returned fire as Steve Williams went back into the house.
A two and a-half hour standoff ended when police stormed into the home and Steve Williams opened fire -- wounding two officers in the legs.
The officers returned fire and killed the gunman.
Cowin says both officers suffered non-life threatening injuries and are stable at Brownwood Regional Medical Center.
(Thanks to Brian Wade of KOXE-KBWD)
source: http://www.wacotrib.com/hp/content/gen/ap/TX_Brownwood_Shootings_.html
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Was KOXE really broadcasting live from the scene ?
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Thursday, May 26, 2005
The GOP, GW Bush, HL Hunt, "Christianity", Joseph McCarthy & HYPOCRICY
One of the most infamous stories to ever come from the Midwest is an intriguing story about a newly-wed couple from Billy James Harris' Christian college. According to accounts, the young lady tearfully confessed to her husband that he was not the first. She confided that she had slept with brother Billy Hargis while in his college. The husband, taken agasp with shock, recoiled and confessed to his wife that she too was not his first. He had also slept with brother Billy! Needless to say scandals like that made Jimmy Swaggart's escapades pale by comparison.
The interesting point about Billy Hargis is that he has been credited with founding the Religious Right. His friend, Carl McIntire, gives him the honor of starting the movement. McIntire ought to be an expert. His early Right Wing ventures claiming divine mandates for his extreme politics made him a national figure. McIntire worked closely with Hargis and the notorious Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy is a peculiar running mate for preachers like McIntire and Hargis. McCarthy was known to lead a rather promiscuous lifestyle. Joe died from alcoholism and was seldom known to restrain himself from gambling, drinking, or womanizing. Perhaps the furthest right of all the right wing journals in the U.S. was "The American Mercury", which blasted Hargis' alleged homosexual tendencies. The point to be taken is that the movement Billy supposedly gave birth to is billing itself as concerned about family values.
Another friend of Joseph McCarthy and bankroll for the Religious Right was H.L. Hunt. H.L.'s libido was world famous. Some biographers claim Hunt believed he had a special genetic trait that was a gift to the world. He wanted to thus spread this gift around the planet as much as possible. Some suggest this is the reason for having two secret families. Others suggest he was always a guy with an eye for the ladies. Some writers have H.L. hiring prostitutes to follow his mentally ill son around the house. These "nurses" were to tend to his needs. Hunt was one who enjoyed gambling.
He once gambled with Al Capone. Sources claim he was still gambling away hundreds of thousands of dollars the weeks before he died. To preserve his superior genetic traits, he is supposed to have sent an aid out to find a blond German woman to help carry on the family name. Hunt's political ties and philosophies were such that he is one of the first people investigated by the FBI after John Kennedy's death.
No less notorious in family values is Colen Davis. A recent movie highlighted the life of the wealthy Texan who once hired Race Horse Haines to defend him in his murder trial. In an earlier white version of the O.J. "trial of the century", Davis' legal encounters had almost the exact same accusations and results. Davis used his bankroll to fund the founding of the Council on National Policy. This secretive organization reads like a whose who among the Religious Right. Hargls' influence, blazing trail of political activism and literature combined with Hunt's and Davis' money helped to provide the foundation for the modern movement. These men's idealogy can be seen in contemporary features of the movement. They provide a peculiar backdrop for a movement billing itself as the family values alternative.
Republican "family values" faithful might forgive Gingrich's and Dole's moves to check in the first mate for a newer more compact model, (Or as William Bennett called it, "going for a trophy wife"). Ronald Reagan's track record might be bushed aside in these issues. (Reagan once failed to recognize his own son at the son's graduation from high school.) But, Hargis, Hunt, and Davis have a lot of history to overcome if anyone is to take family values that seriously.
source: http://www.livingston.net/wilkyjr/link21.htm
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The connection between right-wing GOP CPB head Kenneth Tomlinson and Senator McCarthy
"Fair and balanced" -- the McCarthy way
CPB head Kenneth Tomlinson, who is leading a jihad against "liberal bias" in public broadcasting, and one of his two new ombudsmen both worked for the late Fulton Lewis, a reactionary radio personality associated with Sen. Joe McCarthy.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Eric Boehlert
May 26, 2005 | As the debate over fairness and balance in public broadcasting rages on, there's a curious historical connection to be found between two men at the forefront of the current conservative crusade and a famous radio broadcaster from 50 years ago. How the three crossed paths -- and the way they practiced journalism -- put some of the debate into sharper focus.
A main figure in the roiling controversy is Kenneth Tomlinson, the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who insists that public radio and television suffer from a liberal bias and that actions -- such as adding conservative-leaning programs to the lineup -- must be taken to counterbalance it.
Richard Land: "Angry" Southern Baptists, Pointing Fingers and Retribution ! What's New ?
Leaders of Christian right issue warning to compromising GOP
Abilene Reporter News
Thursday, May 26, 2005
page 5aa
Washington- Richard Land, James Dobson and Paul Weyrich are angry-angry at "activist" judges who they say are legislating from the bench, angry at Democrats who try to derail judicial nominations and angry at Republicans who are allowing the filibuster to survive. But these leaders of the Christian right reserve a special anger for Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who helped broker a compromise on judicial nominees with seven Democrats and six other Republicans.
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"Trust me," said Land, president of the Southern Baptist' Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. "Conservatives know who to blame, and they will have an opprotunity to express their feelings in the primaries of 2008".
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Note to Richard Land.
What's up with all the finger pointing and anger. At your recent SBC Arizona gathering, 8,____ fingers pointing outward to the target of the moment ( it's always someone else to hate or fix isn't it ?). How many fingers does that leave pointing back your way (32,___) ? Compromise, not a good word for those who want total control ! Theocracy ?
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Southern Baptists Not Perfect on Bible
By D. Marty Lasley
SBC Messenger from Tennessee
" Southern Baptists have been so very wrong so many times in their interpretation of the Bible. “
“ In 1845, the SBC was founded on the premise that the Bible sanctions slavery and it is okay for Christians to own slaves. They had dozens of Bible verses to back up their "infallible" interpretation. “
source:
http://www.txbc.org/2000Journals/July2000/July00southernbaptistsnot.htm
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Southern Baptists Vote To Leave World Alliance
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 16, 2004; Page A02
“ The Southern Baptist Convention voted yesterday to pull out of the Baptist World Alliance, accusing the worldwide organization of a drift toward liberalism that included growing tolerance of homosexuality, support for women in the clergy and "anti-American" pronouncements. ”
source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44658-2004Jun15.html
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“ ‘ No bony finger of shame ’ should be pointed at homosexuals .”
Rev. David Roseberry
Rector of Christ Church Episcopal in Plano
-----------------
Horsley: The Good Book presents a good question
By David Horsley Opinion
I'm not sure what "the homosexual agenda" is, but I'm probably part of it - whatever it is.
I believe that homosexuals ought to enjoy the same rights and privileges in a free society as heterosexuals.
I'm not sure what the "culture war" is (Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia referred to it in his dissent to last week's landmark decision), but - whatever it is - it's already been lost by Scalia's side.
I'm not sure what it is about Rep. Warren Chisum and his moral pronouncements that makes me want to roll my eyes, but I have to keep reminding myself that he's in the majority - for whatever that's worth - and I'm not, and neither were the six Supreme Court Justices who voted to strike down Warren Chisum's sodomy law.
Week before last, the U.S. Supreme Court said that government can't intrude into people's bedrooms and arrest citizens for giving and receiving certain types of pleasure.
It seems like a conservative idea to limit government this way, but conservatives are on the other side of the issue.
They want government to monitor the bedrooms of America.
Last week Wal-Mart announced it has added language to internal policy statements to ensure that gay employees aren't discriminated against.
I guess Wal-Mart is part of "the homosexual agenda" too.
Sooner or later - probably later - gays will get everything they want, and this is the way it should be.
Full protection against discrimination, equal rights under the law, the ability to marry each other and form durable, legal relationships - whatever I can do to hasten these things, sign me up.
As a heterosexual Christian man, I've always believed the church was on the wrong side of the gay issue.
Recently the Southern Baptist Convention announced a new initiative aimed at helping gays to convert to heterosexuality.
I'm a firm believer in the right of any homosexual to pursue all avenues to become hetero. I'm moderately skeptical that it will work, but people ought to be free to try.
Reports I've read about gays trying to become straight seem mixed. A few gay men seem to have achieved a satisfactory level of heterosexual functioning.
I don't know if they're officially hetero now, or bisexual, or just pretending.
Some have admitted that they want so badly to be straight that they've fooled themselves into believing they are.
Others, it seems, have actually managed to become heterosexuals - at least in the short run.
Here's my question: What if gays try to convert and fail?
Will the Southern Baptist Convention still be their friend?
Will it bless them for who they are, if who they are is homosexual?
Of course not.
It took the Southern Baptist Convention a hundred years to get around to apologizing for slavery.
So gays ought to look for an apology from the SBC in the year 2103 or so, give or take a few decades. I wouldn't hold my breath until the SBC gets friendly with gays.
Some of the traditional arguments against homosexuality are based in Scripture, which is why the SBC holds so tenaciously to them.
Baptists take the Bible seriously.
But what if we tried to build a case for or against slavery based on biblical statements?
I suspect we'd conclude that slavery is sanctioned by God.
Obviously, during the centuries since the Bible was written, the human community has learned a thing or two about slavery and has come to different conclusions.
We now see biblical statements about slavery within the context of ancient cultures and do not feel bound to uphold statements such as "Slaves, obey your masters."
Similarly, a modern view of homosexuality transcends the ancient cultural mind-set of biblical authors.
The real question becomes: How does a thoughtful Christian faithfully respond to Scripture and decide which ideas are divine and which merely cultural influence?
That's a question about which I'd enjoy hearing from Rep. Warren Chisum or Justice Antonin Scalia or the Southern Baptist Convention.
source: http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/070703/opi_dhorsley.shtml
Authors Bio: David Horsley
David Horsley received a Master of Divinity degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an M.A. in English from West Texas A&M University. He served as a hospital chaplain for nine years, most of them in Houston, before moving to Amarillo with his attorney wife and their two children. He teaches at Amarillo College and writes a popular column for the Amarillo Globe-News.
source: http://www.winedalebooks.com/books/horsley.html
The Brownwood Theocrats ?
read this
and then listen to KXYL's James Williamson, Marion Bishop, and Connie Carmichael, visit a school board meeting, a county commisioners meeting, a city council meeting or attend the Church of your choice. Where will you find the similarites ? One
or all ?
Brownwood Texas, Homeland Security & " War on Terror " ! !
How many un-inspected containers (ship to rail) roll through Downtown Brownwood (85 Historic Blocks) via our rail lines ?
Investigations say ship container scrutiny poor
Wed May 25, 6:02 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional investigators on Wednesday said they have found serious shortcomings in post-Sept. 11 programs aimed at stopping weapons of mass destruction from arriving at U.S. seaports.
Following a 20-month investigation that took U.S. Senate and House of Representatives officials to shipping ports from Rotterdam to Singapore, officials found that only a tiny portion of the containers destined for U.S. ports were being inspected.
"Only one-third of one percent of all containers" were inspected at 36 foreign ports that participate in a Container Security Initiative that the United States launched in 2002, according to a congressional aide who briefed reporters.
Of cargo deemed "high-risk," only 17.5 percent was inspected before leaving overseas ports, the congressional findings said.
source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=5&u=/nm/20050525/ts_nm/security_ports_probe_dc
85 Historic Blocks: http://www.downtownbrownwood.info/
Brownwood Graduates, be Suspicious ...........
David Grimes: Degrees of wisdom
Grads must master the three F's of life: fashion, fruit and flossing
12:01 AM CDT on Thursday, May 26, 2005
Congratulations, graduates! You have made it through school! And now, as your reward, you must remain seated while total strangers with absolutely no credentials give you unsolicited advice on how to live the rest of your life! You're welcome!
---------------------
Be suspicious of people who justify making other people's lives miserable by saying it is God's will. Be equally suspicious of politicians who quack about morality. Do not be afraid to stand up for what you believe in. Be wary of ideologues. The issues that you will face in the coming years will almost never be black and white, but rather some shade of gray. Learn all you can about something before forming an opinion.
Don't assume that someone in authority is deserving of your trust simply because he or she is in authority. People who say they have your best interests at heart sometimes don't. If an investment deal sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Black socks and sandals are never a wise fashion combination.
to read the entire article go to.....http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/052605dnedigrimes.e3063d08.html
Welcome Aboard Evangelicals ! But be warned.........
Posted on Wed, May. 25, 2005
Increasingly, evangelists are embracing environmentalism
BY PAUL NUSSBAUM
Knight Ridder Newspapers
PHILADELPHIA - (KRT) - One of Calvin DeWitt's favorite Bible verses is Revelation 11:18:
"... The time has come for judging the dead ... and for destroying those who destroy the Earth."
DeWitt, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, is a leader in a growing evangelical Christian movement to protect the environment in the name of God.
"This comes right out of the Christian calling of how we should live our lives on Earth," DeWitt said. "Christians are coming on board more and more because there really is an interest in seeking the kingdom of God beyond just individual needs."
On such issues as global climate change, endangered species, and mercury hazards to the unborn, many evangelical Christians are parting ways with conservatives. They are embracing environmental protection as "stewardship" of God's creation.
One such expression came last week, when President Bush gave the commencement address at Calvin College, a small school in the Reformed tradition in Grand Rapids, Mich. A third of the faculty of the college signed an open letter to Bush, citing "conflicts between our understanding of what Christians are called to do and many of the policies of your administration."
Among the concerns, the faculty wrote: "As Christians we are called to be caretakers of God's good creation. We believe your environmental policies have harmed creation and have not promoted long-term stewardship of our natural environment."
The environmental awakening among evangelicals has prompted some to seek common ground with other faiths. A group of evangelical Protestant scientists is working with Jewish scholars and scientists to form a "Noah Alliance" to protect endangered species - and the Endangered Species Act.
"Ours is the time for a concert of religious voices to proclaim our privilege and responsibility for not allowing the great lineages of God's living creatures to be broken," says a draft statement being circulated this month among Christian and Jewish scientists.
Broadly defined, evangelicals are Christians who have had a personal or "born-again" religious conversion, believe the Bible is the word of God, and believe in spreading their faith. Millions of Americans fit the definition, although estimates vary on exactly how many: Forty-two percent of Americans described themselves as evangelical Christians in a 2003 Gallup poll, while only 19 percent said they met all three criteria in a 1995 Gallup poll. The National Association of Evangelicals says about 25 percent of adult Americans are evangelicals.
Evangelicals - especially white, Protestant evangelicals - have been considered reliable supporters of a conservative agenda that focuses on "values" issues such as abortion and gay marriage. In last year's presidential election, Bush received 78 percent of the vote of white evangelicals, according to the National Election Pool exit poll.
Historically, many evangelical Christians have been suspicious of environmentalism as a liberal, godless movement more interested in scenery than souls.
But in recent months, a number of evangelical leaders have advocated for strong measures to protect the environment, based on biblical teachings of stewardship, helping the poor, and loving one's neighbors.
A group of 30 prominent evangelicals - including the Rev. Ted Haggard, chairman of the National Association of Evangelicals; David Neff, editor of Christianity Today magazine; the Rev. Jo Anne Lyon, executive director of the aid organization World Hope International; and the Rev. Dwight McKissic, senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas - met last summer to pledge to "motivate the evangelical community to fully engage environmental issues in a biblically faithful and humble manner, collaborating with those who share these concerns, that we might take our appropriate place in the healing of God's creation, and thus the advance of God's reign."
"We are persuaded that we must not evade our responsibility to care for God's creation," the evangelical leaders wrote after a three-day retreat at Sandy Cove, Md. "We recognize that there is much more we need to learn, and much more praying we need to do, but that we know enough to know that there is no turning back from engaging the threats to God's creation."
The group said it would seek by this summer to find a consensus among evangelical leaders on how best to tackle global warming.
Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, said recent polling showed 48 percent of evangelicals rated the environment as an important priority, nearly as high a proportion - 52 percent - as those who cited abortion as a priority.
"That's an amazing statistic, considering that we've been talking about abortion for 30 years and we haven't even begun to make a case to a lot of our folks about environmental issues," Cizik said.
John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics and coauthor of "The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy" and "Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches From the Front," sees a steady growth in environmental consciousness among evangelicals.
"Historically, evangelical Protestants have been slow to pick up the cause of environmentalism. The more traditional they were, the less interested they were. And some fundamentalists were, in fact, quite hostile to environmentalism.
"In recent times, though, evangelicals have developed an interest in the environment.
"Part of that may be that as more evangelicals have attained middle-class status, they have grown more interested in middle-class issues, and one of those is the environment."
In polling by the Bliss Institute last year, 52 percent of evangelicals agreed with the statement, "Strict rules to protect the environment are necessary even if they cost jobs or result in higher prices."
The Rev. Jim Ball, a Baptist minister who is executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network and organizer of the "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign, says evangelical Christians are more receptive to environmental messages "when we talk about things in terms of family and kids."
So one powerful environmental topic among evangelicals has become the threat of mercury, emitted by coal-burning power plants, to the unborn.
And environmental messages resonate more loudly when they are addressed in Christian language, he said.
"I quote the Golden Rule. I remind people that reducing pollution is loving your neighbor. I quote (the Gospel of) Matthew: '(W)hatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.' I remind people that if something we're doing impacts the poor, we're doing that to Jesus."
Some evangelicals remain leery of associating with environmental activists, concerned about what they regard as liberal solutions to environmental problems: big government and oppressive regulations.
The conservative Focus on the Family organization reacted warily to the National Association of Evangelicals' attention to global warming, saying in a statement, "Focus and the broader evangelical movement have viewed such issues as the protection of marriage, the sanctity of human life, and the related issue of judicial reform as paramount. Our friends at the National Association of Evangelicals, with whom we agree on these and so many other issues, have now staked out a position in the very controversial area of global warming. This is despite the fact that significant disagreement exists within the scientific community regarding the validity of this theory. ... Any issue that seems to put plants and animals above humans is one that we cannot support."
Evangelicals should not be taken for granted by any political party or movement, said Paul Gorman, executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, in Amherst, Mass.
"Religion isn't red or blue and it isn't green, either," Gorman said. "Engagement of the religious community can be a powerful force for the common good."
© 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
source: http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/nation/11733664.htm
Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer's World Wide Web site, at http://www.philly.com
---------------
But be warned.........you made be catagorized by your goverment as a terrorist if you abuse others in the name of God ( as you should be ! ).
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Brownwood: "When The President Talks To God"
Did anyone in Brownwood see/hear this on Jay Leno ?
---------------
BRIGHT EYES LYRICS
"When The President Talks To God"
When the president talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our women’s' rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the president talks to God?
When the president talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God say ever change his mind
When the president talks to God?
When the president talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed?
Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed
When the president talks to God?
When the president talks to God
I wonder which one plays the better cop
We should find some jobs. the ghetto's broke
No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't
Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke
That's what God recommends
When the president talks to God
Do they drink near beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess god just calls a spade a spade
When the president talks to God
When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?
I doubt it
I doubt it
..........and Gripe they are at KXYL w/"Prophet" Williamson leading the way !
EDITORIALS
Genuine leaders
Advocacy groups that had staked out the stubbornest positions were unhappy with Monday's filibuster compromise. Well, let them gripe.
( Star-Telegram, 05/25/2005 04:01 AM CDT)
Forget the titles bestowed on the top-ranking senators from the Republican and Democratic parties.
On Monday, leadership came from 14 senators who put their institution above purely partisan interests. These seven Republicans and seven Democrats opted for moderation and good sense over extremism and destruction:
Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John McCain of Arizona, Olympia Snowe of Maine and John Warner of Virginia are the Republicans.
Sens. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Ken Salazar of Colorado are the Democrats.
By forging an agreement that would break a deadlock over seven federal judicial nominees and avoid a parliamentary confrontation that would rewrite filibuster rules, the group of 14 preserved the Senate's constitutional advice-and-consent role on appointments, protected the minority voice and defended the Senate against forces that would have opted for a meltdown in order to achieve political victory.
Advocacy groups that had staked out the stubbornest positions were unhappy with the compromise because it will allow confirmation of some of President Bush's most conservative selections for the federal appellate courts -- but at the same time enable Democrats to filibuster future nominees under "extraordinary" circumstances.
The Senate's accord, however, will carry only so far unless Bush moderates his confrontational approach to choosing appellate judges. A president is entitled to some deference, but "advice and consent" must mean more than merely a rubber stamp.
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/11733199.htm
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posted for Williamson and his Sheeple ......
Brownwood: Who's defending the Hypocricy ?
Published on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times
A Hypocritical Church's Sex Lessons
The pope has minimized priests' crimes while wagging a finger at gays
by Robert Scheer
One of the most sexually repressed institutions in human history has been caught with its pants down yet again but still insists on wagging its disapproving finger at the rest of us.
Last week, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange released more than 10,000 pages of letters, handwritten notes and other documents from the personnel files of 15 priests and teachers as part of its $100-million settlement of another in a numbing series of class-action sexual abuse lawsuits against the Catholic Church.
Despite the horrific drumbeat of child molestation revelations, however, sensible Catholics hoping for a more transparent and less sexually repressed church shouldn't hold their breath. The new pope is not only a longtime leader of vicious church attacks on "evil" gays, he also has shamefully blamed the molestation scandal on the media.
"In the church, priests also are sinners. But I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower," said Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — in 2002 when he was the head man of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
There is nothing holy about shooting the messenger.
The leader of the world's largest religious denomination apparently doesn't understand the essential truth of the molestation scandal: It was the church's breathtakingly systematic cover-up over many decades that so horrified followers and outsiders alike.
When it comes to matters of poverty, immigration and peace, the Catholic Church is a major source of enlightenment. It is a serious loss to have the church's work in those areas undermined by its Dark Ages attitude on sex. And, as is so often the case with the most severely judgmental and repressed, this stance is rife with moral hypocrisy.
How else to explain an institution that refuses to accept responsibility for the lives it has violated through sexual abuse, even as it incessantly condemns same-sex couples for wanting to form stable families? If you are gay and want to get married you are "deviant and a threat to society," according to the Vatican, and if you adopt a child -- the irony is dark here -- it is tantamount to abuse.
Pope Benedict himself exemplifies this contradiction. The same man who doesn't get the scale of the molestation cover-ups has written some of the Vatican's most anti-gay rhetoric, including a 1986 letter to bishops calling homosexuality "an intrinsic moral evil," as well as a 2003 battle plan telling Catholic politicians they have a "moral duty" to oppose gay marriage and adoptions.
"Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior … but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity," stated the church's "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons."
"Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development."
Tell that to the many happy children of loving and nurturing parents who happen to be gay. Such a common-sense solution to the tragedy of unwanted children is what the pope abhors as part of a "dictatorship of relativism," to quote from his pre-anointment speech April 18.
This is all especially outrageous considering that the openly gay community has offered a model of honest and socially accountable behavior, while the Catholic Church — secretive and unaccountable — has provided exactly the opposite. In fact, the church's history of sexual abuse by "celibate" priests and nuns makes the case that the repression of natural impulses leads to, rather than discourages, sexual abuse. Is it too much to ask that a religious institution sporting such an abysmal record in dealing with these matters stop dictating the bedroom behavior of its millions of followers?
Sadly, it probably is. The church will continue to face eruptions of sexual scandal because of its renewed insistence on a sanctimonious medieval morality ignoring the main lesson of this sorry affair: Sex is natural, becoming ugly and exploitive only when denied healthy outlets.
For our civil society, the message is even more compelling: Yes to the life decisions of responsible adults, gay or heterosexual; no to the sexual dictates of a church that cannot be trusted to monitor its own behavior.
source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0524-23.htm
---------------------------
Wednesday May 25, 2005
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You searched for: Ratzinger Displaying 1-3 of 3 result(s) found.
A pope for the new century
With the selection of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to be the Catholic Church's 265th pontiff, a strong signal was sent that the work of Pope John Paul II will continue. He was one of his predecessor's closest allies and, by many accounts, his philosophi...
2.2K - Apr. 22, 2005; scored 1000.0
Revealing truth painful, necessary -- Britt Towery
George W. Bush was out bicycling and came upon a small boy with a box of new puppies. George asked the boy what they were. The boy said they were all Republicans. George like that, patted the boy on the head and went on his way. About a week later Ge...
3.9K - May. 6, 2005; scored 789.0
Area residents express positive views about Pope Benedict XVI
With the passing of Pope John Paul II on April 2, Catholics around the world mourned -- and then waited for the white smoke to signify the selection of a new pope. Joseph Ratzinger, who claimed the name of Pope Benedict XVI, was the man chosen to lea...
2.4K - Apr. 28, 2005; scored 499.0
source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/shared-content/search/index.php?search=go&o=0&q=Ratzinger&d1=05-11-2004&d2=05-25-2005&s=relevance&r=Subject%2CAuthor%2CContent&l=20
Waco to Brownwood: Denial, Acknowledgement & Rose Colored Glasses
Editorial: Time for Waco to own up to tragic lynching 89 years ago
-----------
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Eighty-nine years ago this month nearly half of Waco's population gathered on the town square to watch and cheer the mutilation, lynching and burning of a 17-year-old black youth named Jesse Washington.
Because the event was captured for posterity in a series of shocking photographs taken by Waco photographer Fred Gildersleeve from the second floor of City Hall, Waco will forever be associated with the the nation's sordid history of lynching.
That's a fact.
It's also a fact that the city of Waco has never acknowledged this historic event.
Rather than fading from memory, the May 15, 1916, lynching has again made Waco the center of attention as historians revive that particularly shameful part of America's past.
Two well-researched books have recently been published that feature the 1916 lynching, which was described in the international press at the time as the “Waco horror.”
A third book on the same incident is being written by a Washington Post reporter.
As a means of healing and bringing people together, Waco City Council members should acknowledge the city's historic failure to recognize the event. It should erect a plaque, marker or some other suitable memorial in a public place.
Public recognition of the event was sought when the Freedom Fountain was constructed behind City Hall, when a courthouse mural was being restored a few years ago and when former Councilman Lawrence Johnson requested recognition of the event after he saw Gildersleeve's lynching photos during a visit to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, where they continue to draw interest.
In recent weeks, the congregations of the Seventh and James Baptist Church, which is predominantly white, and Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, which is predominantly black, gathered in a joint meeting to hear Houston author Patricia Bernstein discuss her book about the lynching, The First Waco Horror.
The Gildersleeve photograph of Washington's smoldering corpse surrounded by thousands of on-lookers was passed around the sanctuary.
The crowd in the town square that Monday 89 years ago was estimated at 15,000. The youth was mutilated with knives before he was strung up with a chain over a fire. He was tortured for more than a hour before being decapitated and dragged through Waco.
The event became a centerpiece for a nationwide antilynching campaign.
In an effort to finally heal past wounds and express a sign of unity for the future, Waco officials should gather suggestions from the community, such as the congregations of local churches, and finally take some action to officially acknowledge the event that clearly refuses to be ignored.
source: http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2005/05/24/20050524wacedit1.html
French Fries, KXYL "Spoon Feeding", & Iraq War
Wonder if the KXYL talking heads will keep this story from their listeners ? If they keep to their track record, they will not want their listeners to see or hear about this. The Sheeple are being spoon fed by KXYL !
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French fries protester regrets war jibe
Jamie Wilson in Washington
Wednesday May 25, 2005
The Guardian
It was a culinary rebuke that echoed around the world, heightening the sense of tension between Washington and Paris in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. But now the US politician who led the campaign to change the name of french fries to "freedom fries" has turned against the war.
Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war "with no justification".
Mr Jones, who in March 2003 circulated a letter demanding that the three cafeterias in the House of Representatives' office buildings ban the word french from menus, said it was meant as a "light-hearted gesture".
But the name change, still in force, made headlines around the world, both for what it said about US-French relations and its pettiness.
Now Mr Jones appears to agree. Asked by a reporter for the North Carolina News and Observer about the name-change campaign - an idea Mr Jones said at the time came to him by a combination of God's hand and a constituent's request - he replied: "I wish it had never happened."
Although he voted for the war, he has since become one of its most vociferous opponents on Capitol Hill, where the hallway outside his office is lined with photographs of the "faces of the fallen".
"If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong," he told the newspaper. "Congress must be told the truth."
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1491567,00.html
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US went to war "with no justification" ! I wonder how they(visit link below) and their loved one's feel about that ?
Brownwood Republican Party Spokesperson: James Williamson
Stonewall
Regular Member
98 Posts Posted - May 24 2005 : 23:33:28
" Perhaps I'm a little naive, but I would hate to think that many people take James Williamson seriously."
source: http://www.cityofbrownwood.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=421&FORUM_ID=23&CAT_ID=9&Forum_Title=Local+Political+News+Radio&Topic_Title=Talk+radio&whichpage=1&tmp=1#pid8178
-----------------------------
Note from Steve to Stonewall:
He's taken serious enough to have been hand picked to represent the Republican Party at a Brownwood Elementary School Event (Presidential Debate) where he closed his presentation with telling the elementary students that a vote for John Kerry would mean "Men marrying Men" and "throwing babies in the trash" ! Stonewall needs to read our posts from our Congressmans (Mike Conaway) Chief of Staff (Jeff Burton) regarding people who think they can say anything in the name of God. I think in the next debate the schoolchildren should be taught to recognize "Wolves in Sheeps Clothing and False Prophets" !
Brownwood Media Bias: Starts at KXYL ?
as this relates to KXYL's Connie Carmichael's diatribe against Newsweek on this mornings show...
Newsweek, bad. Lying about Tillman? That's okay
by kos
Tue May 24th, 2005 at 09:14:03 PDT
E & P:
Where, in the week after the Great Newsweek Error, is the comparable outrage in the press, in the blogosphere, and at the White House over the military's outright lying in the coverup of the death of former NFL star Pat Tillman? Where are the calls for apologies to the public and the firing of those responsible? Who is demanding that the Pentagon's word should never be trusted unless backed up by numerous named and credible sources?
Where is a Scott McClellan lecture on ethics and credibility?
The Tillman scandal is back in the news thanks not to the military coming clean but because of a newspaper account. Ironically, the newspaper in question, The Washington Post,which has taken the lead on this story since last December, is big brother to Newsweek.
The Post's Josh White reported this week that Tillman's parents are now ripping the Army, saying that the military's investigations into their son's 2004 friendly fire death in Afghanistan was a sham based on "lies" and that the Army cover-up made it harder for them to deal with their loss. They are speaking out now because they have finally had a chance to look at the full records of the military probe.
"Tillman's mother and father said in interviews that they believe the military and the government created a heroic tale about how their son died to foster a patriotic response across the country," White reported.
While military officials' lying to the parents have gained wide publicity in the past two days, hardly anyone has mentioned that they also lied to the public and to the press, which dutifully carried one report after another based on the Pentagon's spin.
source: http://www.dailykos.com/
Brownwood Poor, Electricity, & Politics
May 23, 2005, 11:58PM
Low-income bill-payers face jolt
Fund providing electricity break likely to be empty
Associated Press
AUSTIN - About 120,000 low-income TXU customers can expect to pay 10 percent more for electricity each month because of state budget negotiations.
That would be on top of TXU's 9.9 percent rate hike approved May 11 by the Public Utility Commission of Texas.
A legislative committee considering the state's budget voted last week to drain a fund that provides electric discounts for about 370,000 low-income Texans. The panel directed the money to other uses in the two-year budget.
Critics contend that breaks a promise of lower rates made under the state's 1999 electric deregulation law. It also adds to the generally shabby treatment of low-income Texans by the 79th Legislature, said state Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston.
However, state Sen. Steve Ogden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said the money would be better used for other social services.
"The issue before us is how we cover the health and human services budget that has increased by 18 percent," said Ogden, R-Bryan.
About $200 million flows each year into the System Benefit Fund, which was created as part of the electric deregulation law adopted by the Legislature in 1999.
TXU supports the fund and has made a separate $15 million contribution to help low-income customers.
"We recognize that electricity is a matter of life or death in Texas," company spokesman Chris Schein said. "We support the System Benefit Fund and what it does — and what it can do — for those customers in need."
The committee has yet to approve the final budget, which must go to the full House and Senate before the Legislature convenes May 30.
source: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3195125
"Church Sign Sparks Debate": Sounds like the Bangs Church of Christ
Published on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 by the Daily Courier / Rutherford, North Carolina
Church Sign Sparks Debate
by Josh Humphries
FOREST CITY -- A sign in front of a Baptist church on one of the most traveled highways in the county stirred controversy over religious tolerance and first-amendment rights this weekend.
A sign in front of Danieltown Baptist Church, located at 2361 U.S. 221 south reads "The Koran needs to be flushed," and the Rev. Creighton Lovelace , pastor of the church, is not apologizing for the display.
"I believe that it is a statement supporting the word of God and that it (the Bible) is above all and that any other religious book that does not teach Christ as savior and lord as the 66 books of the Bible teaches it, is wrong," said Lovelace. "I knew that whenever we decided to put that sign up that there would be people who wouldn't agree with it, and there would be some that would, and so we just have to stand up for what's right."
Seema Riley, a Muslim, who was born in Pakistan and reared in New York, was one of those upset by the sign.
She moved to Rutherford County for the "small town friendly" atmosphere, she said. When she saw the sign on the side of the highway Saturday she felt angered and threatened.
"We need a certain degree of tolerance," said Riley. "That sign doesn't really reflect what I think this county is about."
She said that according to Islamic faith, a follower does not even touch the Koran without going through a ritual cleansing. Muslims believe the physical book to be a sacred item that is treated with respect and reverence, much like the image of Jesus in Christianity, according to a report on National Public Radio.
"For someone to put that sign up -- the person just didn't understand -- didn't take into consideration what putting up that sign means," said Riley. "I don't think it should be posted on a sign in public viewing on the highway to create a hostile environment for me."
The appearance of the sign follows a national news story from last week. Newsweek magazine retracted a story reporting that military guards at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet during interrogation of a detainee. The Newsweek story sent Washington in a frenzy and was blamed for igniting Muslim riots and deaths abroad, including a particularly violent outburst in Afghanistan.
"Our creed as a Christian, or a Protestant, or a Baptist church -- of course we don't have a creed but the bible -- but we do have the Baptist faith and message that says that we should cling to the 66 books of the Holy Bible and any other book outside of that claiming to know the way of God or claiming to be God's word is automatically written off and is trying to defeat people from the way of true righteousness inside of our viewpoint in how we view the word of God," Lovelace said.
"Putting such a sign in a public place is an un-American example of intolerance, of aggressive disrespect for other citizens' deeply held views," said Donald Searing, Burton Craige Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "This is the sort of attitude and action that seriously endangers the liberty which lies at the heart of our democracy. It is also a good reminder that just because one may have the legal right to say something, doing so may not be morally, socially or politically desirable."
When Lovelace was asked whether he considered before he put the sign up that there may be some consequences or that some people may be angered, he said he was aware of the likelihood of angering some people.
"Well, I thought about it and I said there may be people who are offended by it but the way I look at it, Jesus told his followers that if the world hates you, don't feel bad because they hated me first," said Lovelace. "If we stand for what is right and for God's word and for Christianity then the world is going to condemn us and so right away when I got a complaint I said 'well somebody's mad, somebody's offended, so we must be doing something right.'"
Danieltown Baptist Church belongs to the Sandy Run Baptist Association and the association's Director of Missions the Rev. Jim Diehl said that Lovelace's opinion does not necessarily reflect that of that organization.
"Each of the churches of the Sandy Run Baptist Association are autonomous bodies," said Diehl. "Each church can develop a stance on doctrinal issues and can develop its own stance on moral issues."
The Rev. Billy Honeycutt, of the Green River Baptist Association said that he hopes that those who see the sign keep tolerance in mind.
"Respecting religion is important and respecting other people is important," said Honeycutt. "Hopefully, a lot of people will have that thought when they see the sign."
Following the religious controversy at a church in Waynesville where several members were asked to leave in what was termed a dispute over politics, several groups threatened to boycott the entire town due to the actions of one preacher.
Director of the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce Bill Hall said he does not think that the Danieltown sign will have a negative impact on the county's tourism or economic vitality.
"It is unfortunate that things like that happen and it certainly doesn't represent Rutherford County," said Hall. "I think that most people will understand that that is not a common attitude in this community."
Lovelace said he felt it was the work of God to display the sign and that no one in the church has spoken up against it to him.
He said the church has 55 members on the roster and he has only received one angry phone call since the sign was posted.
"We have a good group of people," said Lovelace.
Lovelace said the sign changes every week.
About Friday or Saturday we will have a new sign," he said. "It should state to some effect 'Where are your treasures? Are they at the flea market or are they in heaven?'"
Lovelace said that he does not have anything against the flea market that recently opened up down the street from the church.
"I enjoy a good flea market, but if people can be down there at eight o'clock why can't they be at church at 11," he said.
Copyright © 2005 The Daily Courier
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Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Grade the Texas Legislature
A Poll from the Waxahachie Daily Light. I voted a "D" !
How would you grade the Texas Legislature so far this session?:
A 1.6%
B 3.2%
C 17.5%
D 25.4%
F 52.4%
Total Votes: 63
Your Vote: D
source: http://www.thedailylight.com/
Do you think "Gay Pollution" would get some attention from the Neo-con Republicans
Jacquielynn Floyd:
Doesn't Legislature have enough to do?
09:05 PM CDT on Monday, May 23, 2005
Great news from Austin: Texas legislators are apparently working much harder than we ever expected!
Our elected officials must be too modest to say so, but it seems that late last week, in a burst of unprecedented industry, they fixed all the state's thorniest and least tractable problems. They must have devised brilliant, 11th-hour solutions and compromises on taxes, the budget, protective services, school financing. They must have fixed everything!
Those things must all surely be squared away, because on Saturday, they had the leisure to wander off into the ideological canebrake and confront the nonexistent bugaboo of gay marriage.
If, by chance, all those other real and pressing problems weren't solved, it's hard to imagine why the state Senate would waste precious time wheezing on about the need for an amendment to our state's constitution to protect the so-called "sanctity of marriage."
"I believe we should protect the institution of marriage," intoned Sen. Todd Staples, R-Palestine, the bill's sponsor. "We should hold that up higher than any other relationship."
He refers to the sacrosanct covenant into which the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau entered over the weekend with her schoolboy sweetheart ( Entertainment Tonight had exclusive rights).
He means the institution from which nearly 2 million Americans seek legal exit every year. He means the holy rite that couples celebrate and hold dear until one of them becomes besotted with a friend or a neighbor or somebody at the office. He's talking about that deep and abiding bond that so often peters out amid vicious bickering about who gets the house or the kids or the vacuum cleaner.
If pressed for a position on this issue, I have to say that with a track record like that, I just don't see how straight people have any business telling gay people that, sorry, marriage is just too important and sanctified for you.
How much worse could they screw it up? I say, if two people named Otis and Beauregard want to get hitched, it doesn't have much to do with me, unless I'm invited and have to shop for a gift.
But even if you don't agree that this right should be extended – and I understand that many people have reservations about what they view as a dramatic change to our social tradition – I just don't see why the Legislature saw a need to bring everything else to a screeching halt while they jawboned about it.
They behaved as if an army of scary muscular men in leather thongs was bearing down on the Capitol, as if some peril were ringing the alarm so persistently that the Constitution required immediate adjustment.
In short, they neatly managed to create contention and paranoia over an issue that wasn't posing any particular threat. From here on out, the noisiest and most outrageous gay-rights activists will get all the sound bites, which in turn will frighten and galvanize their most intolerant and alarmist counterparts.
Ordinary chumps (me) who saw no problem with the way things already were will be trampled in the stampede.
So now we have a scheduled item on the statewide ballot next November, a big, divisive, headline-grabbing issue that will drown out the prosaic workaday stuff with which we ought to be occupied.
Who has time for transportation, education, jobs, economic development, environmental quality or any of 1,000 other tough, complicated worker-bee problems when we can scream and flail and shoot the finger at each other across the great cultural abyss?
Maybe our elected officials, who I have just learned on closer examination did not fix everything that needs attention in Texas over the weekend, were just bored.
Hard problems without easy answers can grind you down. In politics, it's sometimes more rewarding to retreat to the rhetorical bunker and gird for battle.
It's a little like students who nurture their outrage and cherish every opportunity to protest – partly, I suspect, because that sort of activity is so much more exciting than going to class.
But it's a lousy excuse for neglecting the business that you're there for.
Grandstand if you want to – but do it on your own time.
E-mail jfloyd@dallasnews.com
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/jfloyd/stories/052405dnmetfloyd.d93486cc.html
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Note from Steve: The groups in Midlothian who are needing help from the "Neo Con Republicans" ( In Bed with Corporate America ! ) in Austin and Washington have missed a golden opportunity to some how attach the gay issue with their pollution issues in Ellis and Dallas Counties. They should have pitched their issue as a "Gay Pollution" issue (Bush's Karl Rove tactics) by claiming that the pollution coming from the stacks of the plants is the fault of gays and lesbians and thus is a threat to their families ! Dr James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, David Barton, James Williamson, Bill Frist, Joe Barton, Tom Delay, Hal Lindsey and all the other "Neo'con Republicans" would have beaten a path to Midlothian and rescue the community from the "Gay Pollution" being spewed from the stacks !
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See our post "Dirty Dancing" Republican Style
Monday, May 23, 2005
Jeannie Pirro, Hillary Clinton & Brownwood Texas
Monday, May 23, 2005 11:39 a.m. EDT
Pirro Makes Move to Challenge Hillary Clinton
Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro is expected to announce at a press conference later today that she will not be seeking a fourth term.
New York Republican insiders tell NewsMax that Pirro will soon make known plans to challenge Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for her seat next year.
In her announcement today, Pirro will indicate she is not running for re-election so that she can "seek a higher office," an insider told NewsMax. Pirro will not explicitly mention Hillary Clinton or a Senate bid.
A source familiar with Pirro's inner circle, however, tells NewsMax that she definitely believes Hillary is vulnerable and that she intends to run against Sen. Clinton next year.
With less than 18 months to go before the 2006 election, only Edward Cox - a prominent attorney and son-in-law to the late President Richard Nixon - has announced his intention to challenge Hillary Clinton.
Cox has already organized a campaign staff and has begun fund raising for his bid.
However, a top New York insider says that Pirro has already received the tacit support of Gov. George Pataki, who had been backing Cox.
The national Republican committee and White House may have played a role in persuading Pirro to run.
Pirro's challenge against Clinton may be an uphill battle.
Sen. Clinton's approval rating among New York voters approaches 70 percent in recent polls.
But 60 percent of her supporters also say they want her to pledge not to run for president in 2008 - something Clinton has so far been unwilling to do.
A frequent television commentator, Mrs. Pirro began her career in law enforcement as a prosecutor in Westchester more than 25 years ago, according to an online biography.
In 1978, she headed the county's first domestic violence unit, one of only four in the nation, and was later elected the first woman jurist to sit on the Westchester County Court bench.
Mrs. Pirro's High Technology Crimes unit has won plaudits nationwide for its work against pedophiles and child pornographers who use the Internet to prey on children.
source: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/5/23/114130.shtml?j=1181318&e=steve_squared@verizon.net&l=422279_HTML&u=21457082
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Clinton dipping into deep Texas pockets
State is No. 2 in donations for N.Y. senator's re-election
07:36 AM CDT on Tuesday, May 24, 2005
By WAYNE SLATER / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – When it comes to political fundraising, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has learned there's plenty of green in red-state Texas.
Also Online
Clinton pulls a half-mil from Texas pockets
Fastest route to change: political connections
Mrs. Clinton has raised more than $460,000 from Texas so far this year – more than any other state except New York, where she serves as the junior U.S. senator.
"Hillary has some very good friends in Texas," said spokeswoman Ann Lewis. "She's very actively raising funds for her Senate re-election campaign, and we're appreciative that her friends in Texas have been able to help."
During the last two years, the Lone Star State has been the third-biggest source of campaign cash for the former first lady and potential Democratic presidential candidate, according to federal contribution reports.
In a flurry of March fundraisers that flew largely under the political radar, Mrs. Clinton dipped into some deep pockets at stops in Dallas, Austin, Houston and McAllen. They helped her raise more from Republican-dominated Texas than even from overwhelmingly Democratic California.
Democrat Garry Mauro said Mrs. Clinton is a marquee name among the party faithful. And she has long been connected to Texas Democratic politics; she and husband Bill ran Sen. George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign in the state.
to view the entire article please visit: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/052405dntexhillary.d9504002.html
"Christocrat": As it relates to Brownwood Talk Radio
Be clear: 'Christocrat'
Re: "Christian conservatives put clout behind anti-filibuster movement," May 16 news story.
Your headlines would be clearer if instead of "Christian" you would use the word "Christocrat."
Most of my friends and I are Christian but do not believe in many of the things the Christocrats are doing. The media need to keep the difference clear.
Lois Sullivan, Temple
source:http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/letters/stories/052305dnedimonletters.d392c696.html
"Cover up & Sham": No Wonder KXYL wants you to think about SeatBelts !
Tillman's Parents Are Critical Of Army
Family Questions Reversal On Cause of Ranger's Death
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 23, 2005; Page A01
Former NFL player Pat Tillman's family is lashing out against the Army, saying that the military's investigations into Tillman's friendly-fire death in Afghanistan last year were a sham and that Army efforts to cover up the truth have made it harder for them to deal with their loss.
to read the entire article go to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/22/AR2005052200865.html
Brownwood Heat ? Try a Misting System. They Work.
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/gr_lawns_landscaping/article/0,2029,DIY_13852_3721313,00.html
The world's biggest convicted child pornographer "Grew up in Brownwood" !
Source: Independent.co.uk
By Pip Clothier
Date: May 13, 2003
Thomas Reedy used to be a nurse. Then he found the Net and made a fortune. Now he faces 1,335 years in jail
Last week Pete Townshend lost his reputation and gained five years on the sex offenders register after accessing a child porn website. Should he ever feel the need to find out, his troubles began in a handsome but small red-brick building on the corner of Main Street in Fort Worth, Texas. That was where a geeky Texan called Thomas Reedy first set up an internet adult porn business. It was a business that mushroomed into something far more chilling. Reedy's desire for cash led him to galvanise an illegal but rampant desire for hard-core child pornography.
Within two years, the hard drives on the computers of Thomas Reedy's Landslide Productions were bulging with credit card details from 250,000 internet customers across the globe. Child porn consumers from 60 countries were being satisfied by Reedy's operation. One of those who entered their credit card details was Pete Townshend of The Who. In February, Reedy's building was demolished to make a car park. A global centre for child porn was in ruins – as Townshend's career also appears to be.
Reedy is now sitting in a Texan prison contemplating one of the world's longest ever sentences – 1,335 years, 15 years for each of the 89 charges, to run consecutively. His wife, Janice, who worked at the business, received 14 years.Despite the "only in America"-style sentence, the woman who prosecuted Reedy, Assistant District Attorney Terri Moore, regards it as well-deserved. "He was making a tremendous amount of profit off the misery of children," she says. "He was feeding these perverts. He was feeding a beast. Granted, he wasn't hurting them himself. He wasn't in the photo committing the rape and he was not developing the photo, but he was feeding that. In my mind he just facilitated the rape of a child and should have a very harsh sentence." It is a pat speech from a woman used to dealing with nasty criminals in Texas. Yet, investigating the horrendous world of Landslide, it is hard not to agree with her.
Thomas Reedy, a former care nurse, was known in some quarters as "Greedy Reedy". His plan was to make a small fortune from some of the most sordid images conceivable, by putting them on the internet. While not the first to handle this kind of material – it's some years since paedophiles first used the net to swap the lurid collections that, previously, they had only been able to post to each other, or sell in back-street shops – he was the first to sell pay-per-view child porn on the net, and the first to succeed. His example has caused the net to be deluged by copycat sites.
"We're now receiving 80-85 new reports per week about pay-per-view child porn websites, nearly all of them housed in eastern Europe, Russia, the Ukraine and in different countries in South-east Asia," says John Carr from the Internet Watch Foundation. "I'm absolutely certain that one of the reasons we're seeing the growth is precisely because, following the Landslide case, criminals from all over the world realise how much money there is to be made in it."
Until recently, and on the Landslide site, the images were predominantly recycled child porn. But the huge amounts of money that web-based porn has injected into the industry is changing all that. "More and more children are being abused on a regular basis in order to provide new material for those websites," says Carr. "We know about certain individuals who are, on a regular basis, bringing children into a studio, a garage, photographing them and within 48 hours that material is up on the web."
Reedy grew up in Brownwood, a small town in central Texas. His father, a flea-market trader, provided a solid middle-class upbringing for his two boys. In his late teens, Reedy, the elder son, thought he might make it as a rock star. The family photo of him wearing black with an odd goatee beard makes him look like a heavy metal fan, although his taste was more country and western, true to his Texan roots. His future was to be more mundane, and he eventually headed off to nursing college, where his graduation shot reveals a smiling, ordinary man. However, between his long shifts at care homes, Thomas got going on the computer and quickly developed a talent for internet ideas. Some of the 54 different computer domain names that he registered were innocent enough – Harley Lovers.com, Payhere.net, Geekpay.com. There were some lurid sounding ones – net.sex.magazine and Pussies4U – but these were never activated by the canny Reedy. His most grotesque imagery was eventually marketed under the innocuous domain names of Landslide.com and Quayz.com.
Between 1996 and 1999, Landslide took nearly $10m, 85 per cent of which came from child porn. After paying handsome salaries and expenses that covered luxuries such as Mercedes sports cars for himself and Janice, investigators say, it still recorded profits of nearly $3m. Thomas and Janice, and her daughter from a previous marriage, moved into a sumptuous house on the prairies outside Fort Worth. Apart from throwing the occasional pool party at which he played loud classical music, Reedy kept a low profile.
source: http://www.crime-research.org/news/2003/05/Mess1306.html
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Brockovich up the road from Brownwood ! "Dirty Dancing" Republican Style !
May 13, 2005, 10:20AM
Brockovich to eye complaints in N. Texas town
Associated Press
MIDLOTHIAN — Environmental crusader Erin Brockovich plans to visit Ellis County to investigate whether industrial pollution is hurting people there.
Brockovich attained fame from a movie biography that bore her name.
Her next stop is Midlothian, a town of almost 10,000 residents 25 miles southwest of Dallas.
The California law firm Masry & Vititoe employs her as a researcher and community liaison. The firm has sued industries they contend are polluters who are poisoning or even killing nearby residents.
The law firm is teaming up with the Arlington law McCurdy & McCurdy. Together, they hope to determine whether a case can be built to link pollution from cement plants and other Midlothian industries to cancers and ill health reported by residents.
If they find any violation, they will sue the operators of cement kilns and other industries in Midlothian.
Industry representatives adamantly deny that emissions from their operations have harmed anyone.
Brockovich and company are planning a town hall meeting next month in Midlothian to discuss their research and gauge interest in a suit, said Arlington lawyer Jim Ross, who is working with Brockovich.
Brockovich said she plans "to educate and make the community aware of the facts."
She said she became involved when she got a call from an old high school friend from Lawrence, Kan., who lives in Midlothian.
source: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3180679
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Republicans take note of your leaders "Dirty Dancing" with " Big Business " !
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Posted on Mon, May. 16, 2005
Quality of air is low priority
By Scott Streater
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
The Texas Legislature has not been kind to clean-air legislation this year.
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"Industry," he said. "Industry is always able, because of lobbying power and persuasion and political contributions, to defeat these types of things."
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Brownwood Water Tower: " Brownwood Sucks " & Civility !
UPDATE:
City looks at wording for tower
Several Brownwood City Council members expressed willingness to reconsider what will appear on the sides of a water tower being erected in north Brownwood, but they asked the municipal staff Tuesday to obtain cost estimates before taking final action...
2.6K - Nov. 24, 2004; scored 278.0
source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/shared-content/search/index.php?search=go&o=0&q=water+tower&d1=05-07-2003&d2=05-21-2005&s=relevance&r=Subject%2CAuthor%2CContent&l=20
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HISTORY:
Used to drive by this water tower site daily on the way in from Lake Brownwood. For about 3 months it read "Brownwood Sucks" in Graffitti. Wrote letter to the editor pointing out message that was being sent daily by the graffitti and pondered conditions that prevailed in our community that promoted the attitude.
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Civility breakdown in the marketplace of ideas
07:09 PM CDT on Saturday, May 21, 2005
In 1969, a Stanford University psychologist named Philip Zimbardo set up an experiment. He arranged for two cars to be abandoned – one on the mean streets of the Bronx, N.Y.; the other in an affluent neighborhood near Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif. The license plates had been removed, and the hoods were left open. Dr. Zimbardo wanted to see what would happen to the cars.In the Bronx, he soon found out. Ten minutes after the car was abandoned, people began stealing parts from it. Within three days, the car was stripped. When there was nothing useful left to take, people smashed windows and ripped out upholstery, until the car was trashed.
In Palo Alto, something quite different happened: nothing. For more than a week, the car sat there unmolested. Dr. Zimbardo was puzzled, but he had a hunch about human nature. To test it, he went out and, in full view of everyone, took a sledgehammer and smashed part of the car.
Soon, passers-by were taking turns with the hammer, delivering blow after satisfying blow. Within a few hours, the vehicle was resting on its roof, demolished.
Among the scholars who took note of Dr. Zimbardo's experiment were two criminologists, James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. The experiment gave rise to their "broken windows" theory of crime, which is illustrated by a common experience: When a broken window in a building is left unrepaired, the rest of the windows are soon broken by vandals.
But why is this? Aside from the fact that it's fun to break windows, why does the broken window invite further vandalism? Drs. Wilson and Kelling say it's because the broken window sends a signal that no one is in charge here, that breaking more windows costs nothing, that it has no undesirable consequences.
The broken window is their metaphor for a whole host of ways that behavioral norms can break down in a community. If one person scrawls graffiti on a wall, others will soon be at it with their spray cans. If one aggressive panhandler begins working a block, others will soon follow.
In short, once people begin disregarding the norms that keep order in a community, both order and community unravel, sometimes with astonishing speed.
Police in big cities have dramatically cut crime rates by applying this theory. Rather than concentrate on felonies such as robbery and assault, they aggressively enforce laws against relatively minor offenses – graffiti, public drinking, panhandling, littering.
When order is visibly restored at that level, the environment signals: This is a community where behavior does have consequences. If you can't get away with jumping a turnstile into the subway, you'd better not try armed robbery.
As the head of a think tank in Washington, I work exclusively in the marketplace of ideas. What we're seeing there today is a disturbing growth of incivility that follows and confirms the broken-windows theory. Alas, this breakdown of civil norms is not a failing of either the political left or the right exclusively. It spreads across the political spectrum from one end to the other.
A few examples:
•A liberal writes a book calling Rush Limbaugh a "big fat idiot." A conservative writes a book calling liberals "useful idiots."
•A liberal writes a book titled The Lies of George W. Bush. A conservative writes a book subtitled Liberal Lies About the American Right.
•A liberal publishes a detailed "case for Bush-hatred." A conservative declares "even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do."
Those few examples – and unfortunately there are many, many more – come from elites in the marketplace of ideas. All are highly educated people who write nationally syndicated columns, publish best-selling books and are hot tickets on radio and television talk shows.
Further down the food chain, lesser lights take up smaller hammers, but they commit even more degrading incivilities. The Internet, with its easy access and worldwide reach, is a breeding ground for Web sites with names like Bushbodycount.com and Toostupidtobepresident.com.
This is how the broken-windows theory plays out in the marketplace of ideas. If you want to see it working in real time, try the following: Log on to AOL, and go to one of the live chat rooms reserved for political chat. Someone will post a civil comment on some political topic. Almost immediately, someone else will swing the verbal hammer of incivility, and from there the chat degrades into a food fight, with invective and insult as the main course.
This illustrates the first aspect of the broken-windows theory, which we saw with the car in Palo Alto. Once someone wields the hammer – once the incivility starts – others will take it as an invitation to join in, and pretty soon there's no limit to the incivility.
Now if you watch closely in that chat room, you'll see something else happening. Watch the screen names of people who make civil comments. Some – a few – will join in the food fight. But most will log off. Their screen names just disappear. They leave because the atmosphere has turned hostile to anything approaching a civil exchange or a real dialogue.
This illustrates the second aspect of the broken-windows theory: Once the insults begin flying, many will opt out. Drs. Wilson and Kelling describe this response when the visible signs of order deteriorate in a neighborhood: "Many residents will think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and they will modify their behavior accordingly. They will use the streets less often, and when on the streets will stay apart from their fellows, moving with averted eyes, silent lips and hurried steps. Don't get involved. For some residents, this growing atomization will matter little. ... But it will matter greatly to other people, whose lives derive meaning and satisfaction from local attachments; for them, the neighborhood will cease to exist except for a few reliable friends whom they arrange to meet."
The chat room shows us that a similar response occurs when civility breaks down in the marketplace of ideas. Many people withdraw and tune out, regardless of whether the incivility occurs in a chat room, on a talk show, in a newspaper column, in political campaign ads or on the floor of Congress.
This is the real danger of incivility. Our free, self-governing society requires an open exchange of ideas, which in turn requires a certain level of civility rooted in mutual respect for each other's opinions and viewpoints.
What we see today is an accelerating competition between the left and the right to see which side can inflict the most damage with the hammer of incivility. Increasingly, those who take part in public debates appear to be exchanging ideas when, in fact, they are trading insults: idiot, liar, moron, traitor.
Last year I attended a dinner honoring Lady Margaret Thatcher on the 25th anniversary of her accession to the prime ministership of Great Britain. She was also a great political leader and has always been a model of civility. If you want to grasp the nature of civility, try to imagine Lady Thatcher calling someone a "big fat idiot." You will instantly understand that civility isn't an accessory one can put on or take off like a scarf. It is inseparable from the character of great leaders.
Incivility is not a social blunder to be compared with using the wrong fork. Rather, it betrays a defect of character. Incivility is dangerous graffiti, regardless of whether it is spray-painted on a subway car or embossed on the title page of a book. The broken-windows theory shows us the dangers in both cases.
But those cases aren't parallel in every way. When behavioral norms break down in a community, police can restore order. But when civility breaks down in the marketplace of ideas, the law is powerless to set things right. And properly so. Our right to speak freely – and to speak with incivility, if we choose – is guaranteed by those five glorious words in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law ... ."
And yet, the need for civility has never been greater. Our nation is divided as never before between the left and the right. We are at loggerheads on profoundly important political and social questions. Civilization itself is under barbaric attack from without.
Sadly, too many of us are not rising to these challenges as a democratic people. We've seen declines in voter participation in national elections. Rather than helping reverse this decline, the rising chorus of incivility is driving out citizens of honest intent and encouraging those who trade in jeering and mockery.
If we are to prevail as a free, self-governing people, we must first govern our tongues and our pens. Restoring civility to public discourse is not an option. It is a necessity.
Edwin J. Feulner
is president of the Heritage Foundation. This essay is adapted from a commencement address he delivered last year at Hillsdale College. You may e-mail Dr. Feulner at staff@heritage .org.
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/052205dnedifeulner.ca9b6fac.html
Brownwood: Big Hate From the Lone Star State
as it relates to Brownwood's History...............
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Friday, May 20, 2005
Did KXYL's James Williamson (Brown County Republican Spokesperson) keep this from his "students" ?
Published on Friday, May 20, 2005 by the Detroit News
President's Visit Stirs Dissent at Conservative Calvin College
by Laura Berman
The president may have been expecting a warmer welcome from Calvin College than he'll get Saturday.
An Open Letter to the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush
On May 21, 2005, you will give the commencement address at Calvin College. We, the undersigned, respect your office, and we join the college in welcoming you to our campus. Like you, we recognize the importance of religious commitment in American political life.
We seek open and honest dialogue about the Christian faith and how it is best expressed in the political sphere. While recognizing God as sovereign over individuals and institutions alike, we understand that no single political position should be identified with God's will, and we are conscious that this applies to our own views as well as those of others. At the same time we see conflicts between our understanding of what Christians are called to do and many of the policies of your administration.
As Christians we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort. We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq.
As Christians we are called to lift up the hungry and impoverished. We believe your administration has taken actions that favor the wealthy of our society and burden the poor.
As Christians we are called to actions characterized by love, gentleness, and concern for the most vulnerable among us. We believe your administration has fostered intolerance and divisiveness and has often failed to listen to those with whom it disagrees.
As Christians we are called to be caretakers of God's good creation. We believe your environmental policies have harmed creation and have not promoted long-term stewardship of our natural environment.
Our passion for these matters arises out of the Christian faith that we share with you. We ask you, Mr. President, to re-examine your policies in light of our God-given duty to pursue justice with mercy, and we pray for wisdom for you and all world leaders.
--Concerned faculty, staff, and emeriti of Calvin College
He's delivering a commencement speech to 900 graduating students.
It's a liberal arts school that defines its mission as "developing the Christian mind," and requires what its spokesman, Phil de Haan, calls "an allegiance of faith" from its faculty, and theology studies from its students.
But 100 members of the faculty and another 40 staff and former faculty members have signed an open letter of rebuke to the president that's scheduled to appear as a half-page ad in the Grand Rapids Press on the day of the president's speech.
While welcoming the president, the letter delivers a carefully worded critique of administration policies from a Christian viewpoint. It calls the Iraq war "unjust and unjustified," expresses dismay at policies that "favor the wealthy ... and burden the poor," challenges policies of intolerance toward dissent, and environmental policies that are at odds with being "caretakers of God's good creation."
The letter signers view the occasion of the president's speech as a teachable moment.
"People have been saying that the president's visit will put us on the map. But there are some maps we don't want to be on," says David Crump, a Calvin professor of religion who helped draft the letter.
Crump says that news of the open letter has gotten response from around the country. It's tapped into what he sees as "a silent majority in the Christian evangelical community that resents the Christian vocabulary being hijacked by the religious right."
Crump and Randall Jelks, a history professor, told me they view the president's appearance as an occasion to register dissent -- in a respectful and honorable and Christian way.
"We are guided by Christian conviction. ... John Calvin wasn't an easy pushover kind of guy, either," says Jelks. "He was a reformer."
The letter is one way to register the fact that even in the heart of Christian America, religion does not dictate politics. It reminds Americans that even at a conservative Christian school, where religious values are paramount, people have different social, political and cultural views.
It's a way, the professors say, to counter stereotypical thinking about Christian institutions.
They are insistent on a tradition of liberal thought, grounded in religious belief, that suddenly feels positively 19th century.
And while news of the letter has raised the ire of some alumni, others have been surprised and even delighted to see a diversity of viewpoints on campus, spokesman de Haan said.
The administration may not be thrilled by open dissent -- but it's not planning retribution, either.
And de Haan pointed out that 200 faculty members did not sign the letter.
"Within the bounds of our religious faith, we argue a lot at Calvin. That's what makes us unique," said Jelks.
At Calvin College, they're warming up an idea that used to be as American as apple pie -- dissent delivered with respect.
© 2005 The Detroit News
source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0520-27.htm
Reminds me of the Free-pac mailers used in our neck of the woods against Mainsteam Republicans by Republican Extremists
Gay GOP Candidate Wins Mayoral Election Despite Attacks from GOP Wingnuts
Posted May 20th, 2005 by Jon
Talk about Republicans eating their own. On Tuesday, Mike Gin won election as mayor of Redondo Beach, CA, in a landslide despite an attempt by an outside GOP extremist group to throw the election to his opponent, another Republican.
Gin, a two-term city Redondo Beach councilman and member of the Log Cabin Republicans, received 61 percent of the vote among voters in the beach town of 65,000 south of Los Angeles.
An Orange County based wingnut organization calling itself the California Republican Assembly sent a mailer to voters in the Los Angeles County city noting that Gin took donations from a national gay group and accusing him of having a stealth agenda of promoting gay marriage.
News of the contents of the mailer late last week apparently turned tide in the election toward Gin. His opponent, another Republican city councilman, Gerard Bisignano, tried to disavow himself from the hate-filled Republican mailer.
“I’m extremely disappointed that CRA would do an anti-Mike Gin mailer that by inference would be pro-Gerard Bisignano,” he said. “I was frankly disgusted with it.”
Leaving aside our puzzlement that anyone - gay or straight - would want to be a member of group that despised them, we can rack this one up as another defeat for the Talibani’s attempts at hand-to-hand combat in the political battles here in California.
source: http://www.pensitoreview.com/2005/05/20/gay-gop-candidate-wins-mayoral-election-despite-attacks-from-gop-wingnuts/
Brownwood Domestic Terrorist on the Loose: Who Killed Leon Laureles ?
Brownwood Unsolved Murder Victim from 1996. Murder investigated by Dallas Private Investigator
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Did the Brown County Texas Ranger, Bobby Grubbs (Now Brown County's Newly Elected Sheriff), seek outside help with his investigation of this case ? Did investigators look at Kroger Vendors ? With all the hate being spewed from the airwaves of KXYL maybe they should investigate some of the callers who speak of violent actions against gays, immigrants, etc. Who was doing all the Gay Bashing on the airwaves in 1996 ?
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san angelo standard times
West Texas news: May 11, 1996
Brown County officials investigate death
S-T Correspondent
BROWNWOOD - Brown County law enforcement officers are looking for suspects in the apparent
murder of a 29-year-old Brownwood man.
The body of Juan Leon Laureles was discovered early Friday after firefighters went to a vehicle fire
on Farm-to-Market Road 2126.
At approximately 12:30 a.m., a motorist placed a 911 call reporting a burning vehicle on FM 2126.
A second report, from a caller just getting off work, confirmed the fire.
Fire department personnel and sheriff's deputies were dispatched to the scene and, while the fire was
being extinguished, a body was discovered a few feet from the vehicle.
According to Brown County Chief Deputy Glen Smith, Laureles was shot in the back of the head.
``The body was not burned and had not been set on fire,'' said Smith. ``All we know right now is that
he (Laureles) left his home six miles west of Brownwood on Highway 67-84 at approximately 11:30
p.m.
``He was due at his work at Kroger at midnight. He never showed up.''
Smith said officers did not know if Laureles was robbed, and no motive had been established for his
death.
``The only leads we have right now is we are trying to locate an unknown model pickup, possibly a
one-ton, possibly red and off-white or beige with no bed on the truck,'' Smith said. ``The truck was
seen in the area prior to the time the vehicle and the body were discovered.
``Right now we are talking to family members, co-workers and close friends of the victim.''
The body was sent to the Travis County Medical Examiners Office for an autopsy.
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Where the rubber meets the road..........
Brownwood Animal Control ?
Kittens' deaths stir anger
Collin County: Drowning kittens once seen as OK for control
10:01 PM CDT on Thursday, May 19, 2005
By LINDA STEWART BALL / The Dallas Morning News
There was a time, not too long ago, when drowning kittens was considered an acceptable way to control the cat population.
Longtime Collin County farmers say that method of getting rid of unwanted animals was commonplace to some of the older generation. By today's standards, many consider the act barbaric, even criminal.
On Tuesday, a Fannin County man was arrested on an animal cruelty charge in connection with the drowning of four kittens in a northeast Collin County creek. Prosecution of such cases is rare because witnesses don't usually come forward.
Earl Rutledge, 62, of Trenton was charged after a bystander said she saw a man chuck a box full of kittens over a bridge and took down his license plate number.
If convicted, Mr. Rutledge, who owns a machine shop in McKinney, could face a maximum penalty of two years in jail and a $10,000 fine. Out on bail, Mr. Rutledge could not be reached for comment.
The case has raised the ire of animal welfare activists, but some wonder whether he was caught in changing mores.
Robert "Mike" Black, 55, a Collin County farmer who lives between McKinney and Melissa, said drowning cats was not unusual in the past.
"A lot of people did drown them because they had so many," he said. "They'd put them in a sack and throw some bricks in there and throw them in the tank or whatever."
He said barn cats were a popular way to chase rats away. But when the number of cats grew too large, people didn't know what else to do with them.
There was "no such thing as the SPCA in the country" and sterilizing a cat or dog "was unheard of," he said.
So the animals were destroyed.
"I've seen a lot of people do it, but I just let ... [the wild cats] go," Mr. Black said.
James Randles, 67, who grew up on a farm in Anna and owns about 78 acres in the area, recalled having only one or two cats as a child.
"We came up with one and the next thing you knew you had 25 or 30 running out the back door. You can understand why a man would be aggravated like that. Cats will multiply on you."
But animal-rights advocates say drowning is cruel because it takes several minutes. They claim euthanasia or death by injection is more humane because it's quick and painless.
"The [state animal cruelty law] does not specifically say it's illegal to drown a cat, but I think a reasonable person would say, times change, we have animal shelters you can take animals to that don't charge anything," said James Bias, president of the SPCA of Texas. "Just because we did it 100, 50 or 10 years ago doesn't mean the standards are always going to be the same.
"We had slavery for a number of years. That was acceptable then. It's not accepted now."
Rural sociologists' research shows there is a difference in the way rural people and more urban dwellers view animals – though studies don't specifically address cat drowning.
"People having had a farm background do tend to have a more utilitarian view of animals," said Jeff Sharp, associate professor of rural sociology at Ohio State University. "They see animals serving more of a functional purpose."
But surveys have found that some suburbanites, those in the upper incomes, aren't necessarily the most sympathetic to animals.
"The whole idea of abuse, I'd say that happens across the spectrum," Dr. Sharp said, adding that there's a growing level of concern for animal welfare. "In general, our society is trying to come to some sense of what is appropriate treatment of animals."
Elaine Munch serves on the board of an organization that relocates barn cats to more urban areas. When she was a child, it was not unusual to hear of people taking a bag of kittens down to the river.
"It's a prevalent old country attitude," said Ms. Munch, who is also president of Metroplex Animal Coalition, which provides free spaying and neutering services for low-income Dallas residents' pets. "The city attitude is, if you don't want your animal, drive them out to the country and dump them, as if country folk can take care of them. That's what a lot of ignorant city folk do. Ignorance is everywhere."
Animal-welfare activists say there are better ways to deal with unwanted animals.
"The kinder thing to do is take the animal to a shelter. But the smarter thing to do is to take your animal to be spayed or neutered," Ms. Munch said.
E-mail lsball@dallasnews.com
By the numbers
420,000
The number of cats that two uncontrolled breeding cats can produce in seven years.
70,000
The number of kittens and puppies born in the U.S. each day.
10,000
The number of people born in the U.S. each day.
200,000
Estimated cats and dogs killed each year in animal shelters in Denton, Collin, Tarrant and Dallas counties.
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research
SPCA clinic locations:
•Downtown Dallas: 362 S. Industrial Blvd., 214-651-9611. Open Sunday-Friday, noon to 6 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Spay/Neuter Clinic: 214-651-9611 ext. 116 or 133.
•McKinney: 8411 FM720, 972-562-7297. Open Monday-Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. Spay/Neuter Clinic: 972-562-7297 ext. 105.
•The Colony: 4720 E. Lake Highlands, 972-625-5545. Open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 6 p.m.
SPCA dropoff fees:
•$25 for a pet owner dropping off an animal to be euthanized.
•$53 if a pet owner wishes to make an appointment to be with the animal during the process.
SPCA spay and neuter costs:
•$40 for male cats; $45 for females.
•Dogs: $50 -$100, depending on weight.
•Spay/neuter assistance programs and free spay/neuter programs are available to those who qualify. Go to www.metroplexanimalcoalition.com and click on "Spay/Neuter Information."
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/052005dnccokittensfolo.c4470146.html
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Steve Blow:
Cruelty, or country sensibility?
07:34 PM CDT on Thursday, May 19, 2005
This may sound a little bit like the racist who says, "Some of my best friends are black."
But honest, some of my best pets were cats.
There are dog people and cat people, and I definitely come down on the cat side of the question. I admire their utter independence.
And anyone who knows me will vouch that I can't stand cruelty of any kind. I'm a softie. Stories of animal torture make me sick to my stomach.
Can you tell I'm working up to something here?
OK, I'll quit hem-hawing around and get to the point. As a certified cat-loving, cruelty-hating sort, I have to ask: Are we making too much over the guy who drowned a box of kittens?
I mean, are we really that far removed from our country roots?
It may come as a shock to city folks, but animal control wasn't always a job you relegated to some nameless, faceless euthanasia technician. As my colleague Linda Stewart Ball makes clear in her story today, this was sad work you did yourself, often involving a tow sack, a heavy rock and a creek.
I don't know Earl Rutledge of Trenton. He's the man charged with animal cruelty in this case. If it's proven that he is someone who enjoys inflicting cruelty upon animals, then by all means, let's throw the book at him.
But I suspect that a 62-year-old man from a small Fannin County town may well be one of those people with the rural sensibility that says you take care of your own problems, even if it hurts to do it.
And a box of unwanted kittens is definitely a problem.
Now, I don't want the lynch mob that has been after Mr. Rutledge to turn around and start after me.
Talk radio has been treating the guy like a mass murderer. One of the professional radio blowhards was bragging about the unspeakable ways he would like to personally torture Mr. Rutledge.
Let's try to keep a little perspective here. I'm sure not saying that Mr. Rutledge's alleged action was the ideal. There are much, much better ways to handle the problem.
But there are much worse ways, too. What if Mr. Rutledge was seen simply dropping that box beside the road? Would there be such an uproar?
I doubt it. But our real disgust ought to be directed at the cowardly, all-too-common practice by city types of dumping kittens in the country.
That leaves kittens to slowly starve to death. Or get eaten by coyotes first. Or manage to survive and turn wild, adding to the already huge problem of feral cats.
In my book, a quick end in a creek is far more humane than any of those alternatives.
Yes, absolutely, it would have been better for Mr. Rutledge to take the kittens to a shelter. But the end result would have been just about the same.
No-kill shelters are a nice idea, but they can only accept a tiny fraction of the animals offered to them. Good luck with a box of stray kittens.
Most unwanted animals end up in those shelters with the thankless, heart-breaking task of euthanizing all that aren't adopted.
It has been a sad week for animal stories. In Denton, a man has been on trial for fatally injuring a dog by tapings its mouth shut.
A jury sentenced Richard Swift to two years in state jail, which may seem pretty drastic at first. Two years of community service cleaning cages in an animal shelter sounds about right.
But I suspect that jail sentence had more to do with Mr. Swift's six previous criminal convictions and his obnoxious behavior during the trial.
I guess the point I'm getting at is simply this: Let's definitely punish animal cruelty, but let's not demonize others for simply having different attitudes about animals.
Education will go a lot further than vilification.
E-mail sblow@dallasnews.com
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/all/stories/052005dnmetblow.c44629e1.html
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Newsflash for KXYL TalkingHead and Brown County Republican Spokesperson James Williamson...
Mary Carey to Dine with President Bush
By: Chip Baker
Posted: 1:15 pm PDT 5-18-2005
LOS ANGELES - Porn star and former gubernatorial candidate Mary Carey will be joining her boss, Kick Ass Pictures president Mark Kulkis, in attending a dinner with President Bush in Washington, D.C. on June 14.
Kulkis was invited to attend the event by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which is organizing the event. Over a two-day course of NRCC events preceding the dinner, Carey and Kulkis will be attending a meeting with presidential advisor Karl Rove, giving their recommendations on important national issues.
“I’m hoping to run as Lieutenant Governor of California next year,” Carey said. “Since Arnold {Schwarzenegger} is a Republican, I thought this dinner would be a great networking opportunity for me.”
“I’m honored to be invited to this event,” Kulkis said. “Republicans bill themselves as the pro-business party. Well, you won’t find a group of people more pro-business than pornographers. We contributed over $10 billion to the national economy last year.”
“I’m especially looking forward to meeting Karl Rove,” Carey added. “Smart men like him are so sexy. I know that he’s against gay marriage, but I think I can convince him that a little girl-on-girl action now and then isn’t so bad!”
Kulkis serves as an Honorary Chairman on the NRCC’s Business Advisory Council, a group of business people who advocate a progressive, pro-business agenda. His company produces hardcore adult videos with a guarantee of “No Fake Boobs & No Condoms.” Carey ran for Governor in the 2003 California Recall Election, while Kulkis served as her campaign manager.
source: http://www.americablog.org/
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
As it relates to Brownwood ! Gay Bashing, Anita Bryant & "Compassionate Conservatives" !
May 15, 2005
Just How Gay Is the Right ?
By FRANK RICH
THE screen's first official gay bar," as it was labeled by the film historian Vito Russo, appeared in the 1962 political potboiler "Advise and Consent." Its most prominent visitor was a conservative United States senator.
As sheer coincidence would have it, Otto Preminger's adaptation of Allen Drury's best seller about a brutal confirmation fight was released on a sparkling new DVD last week just as the John Bolton nomination was coming to its committee vote. Like Hollywood's other riveting political movie of 1962, "The Manchurian Candidate," "Advise and Consent" is fallout from the McCarthy era: the controversial nominee for secretary of state (Henry Fonda, who else?) is a stand-in for Alger Hiss. But it may be in even less need of a remake: the intervening four decades have cast this film in a highly contemporary light.
By all rights "Advise and Consent" should be terribly dated. The cold war is now so over that the American and Russian presidents are bonding in Red Square. The film's Kennedy-era ambience - both a J.F.K. brother-in-law (Peter Lawford) and former lover (Gene Tierney) are in the cast - seems as retro as the Hula-Hoop. But when the pivotal gay plot twist kicks in, "Advise and Consent" taps into unfinished business that roils the capital as much, if not more, today than it did then. In 2005, homosexuality is no longer the love that dare not speak its name (the word is never mentioned in the movie), but as Washington fights its nuclear war over the judiciary, it is the ticking time bomb within the conservative movement that no one can defuse.
In "Advise and Consent," the handsome young senator with a gay secret (Don Murray) is from Utah - a striking antecedent of the closeted conservative Mormon lawyer in Tony Kushner's "Angels in America." For a public official to be identified as gay in the Washington of the 50's and 60's meant not only career suicide but also potentially actual suicide. Yet Drury, a staunchly anti-Communist conservative of his time, regarded the character as sympathetic, not a villain. The senator's gay affair, he wrote, was "purely personal and harmed no one else." As the historian David K. Johnson observes in "The Lavender Scare," his 2004 account of Washington's anti-gay witch hunts during the cold war era, it's the gay-baiters in Drury's novel who "are the unprincipled menace to the country, using every available tool for partisan advantage." Preminger's movie takes the same stand (though the preposterously stereotyped gay bar scene is the film's own invention).
That message remains on target now. But in the years since, even as it has ceased to be a crime or necessarily a political career-breaker to be gay, unprincipled gay-baiting has mushroomed into a full-fledged political movement. It's a virulent animosity toward gay people that really unites the leaders of the anti-"activist" judiciary crusade, not any intellectually coherent legal theory (they're for judicial activism when it might benefit them in Florida). Their campaign menaces the country on a grander scale than Drury and Preminger ever could have imagined: it uses gay people as cannon fodder on the way to its greater goal of taking down a branch of government that is crucial to the constitutional checks and balances that "Advise and Consent" so powerfully extols.
Today's judge-bashing firebrands often say that it isn't homosexuality per se that riles them, only the potential legalization of same-sex marriage by the courts. That's a sham. These people have been attacking gay people since well before Massachusetts judges took up the issue of marriage, Vermont legalized civil unions or Gavin Newsom was in grade school. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, characterizes the religious right's anti-gay campaign as a 30-year war, dating back to the late 1970's, when the Miss America runner-up Anita Bryant championed the overturning of an anti-discrimination law protecting gay men and lesbians in Dade County, Fla., and the Rev. Jerry Falwell's newly formed Moral Majority issued a "Declaration of War" against homosexuality. A quarter-century later these views remained so unreconstructed that Mr. Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson would go so far as to pin the 9/11 attacks in part on gay men and lesbians - a charge they later withdrew but that Mr. Robertson repositioned just two weeks ago. In response to a question from George Stephanopoulos, he said he now believes that activist judges are a more serious threat than Al Qaeda.
Their cronies are no different. As The Washington Post reported, Rick Scarborough, the Texas preacher and Tom DeLay acolyte whose "Patriot Pastor" network is a leading player in the judiciary battle, first became active in politics in 1992, when he helped oust a local high-school principal for the crime of presiding over an AIDS-awareness assembly. The American Family Association, whose leader, the Rev. Donald Wildmon, is a Scarborough ally, had been whipping up homophobia long before anyone suspected SpongeBob SquarePants of being a stalking horse (or at least a stalking sea sponge) for same-sex marriage. So-called research available on the Wildmon Web site for years - and still there as of last week - asserts that 17 percent of gay men "report eating and/or rubbing themselves with the feces of their partners" and 15 percent "report sex with animals."
Which judges do these people admire? Their patron saint is the former Alabama chief justice Roy S. Moore, best known for his activism in displaying the Ten Commandments; in a ruling against a lesbian mother in a custody case, Mr. Moore deemed homosexuality "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature" and suggested that the state had the power to prohibit homosexual "conduct" with penalties including "confinement and even execution." Another hero is William H. Pryor Jr., the former Alabama attorney general whose nomination to the federal bench was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. A Pryor brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Texas anti-sodomy law argued that decriminalized gay sex would lead to legalized necrophilia, bestiality and child pornography. It was Justice Anthony Kennedy's eloquent dismissal of such vitriol in his 2003 majority opinion striking down the Texas statute that has since made him the right's No. 1 judicial piñata.
What adds a peculiar dynamic to this anti-gay juggernaut is the continued emergence of gay people within its ranks. Allen Drury would have been incredulous if gay-baiters hounding his Utah senator had turned out to be gay themselves, but this has been a consistent pattern throughout the 30-year war. Terry Dolan, a closeted gay man, ran the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which as far back as 1980 was putting out fund-raising letters that said, "Our nation's moral fiber is being weakened by the growing homosexual movement and the fanatical E.R.A. pushers (many of whom publicly brag they are lesbians)." (Dolan recanted and endorsed gay rights before he died of AIDS in 1986.) The latest boldface name to marry his same-sex partner in Massachusetts is Arthur Finkelstein, the political operative behind the electoral success of Jesse Helms, a senator so homophobic he voted in the minority of the 97-to-3 reauthorization of the Ryan White act for AIDS funding and treatment in 1995.
But surely the most arresting recent case is James E. West, the powerful Republican mayor of Spokane, Wash., whose double life has just been exposed by the local paper, The Spokesman-Review. Mr. West's long, successful political career has been distinguished by his attempts to ban gay men and lesbians from schools and day care centers, to fire gay state employees, to deny City Hall benefits to domestic partners and to stifle AIDS-prevention education. The Spokesman-Review caught him trolling gay Web sites for young men and trying to lure them with gifts and favors. (He has denied accusations of abusing boys when he was a Boy Scout leader some 25 years ago.) Not unlike the Roy Cohn of "Angels in America" - who describes himself as "a heterosexual man" who has sex "with guys" - Mr. West has said he had "relations with adult men" but doesn't "characterize" himself as gay. This is more than hypocrisy - it's pathology.
ALLEN Drury might not have known what to make of Mr. West or of another odd tic in the 30-year war, the recurrent emergence of gay-baiting ideologues with openly gay children (Phyllis Schlafly, Randall Terry, Alan Keyes). According to Mr. Johnson's fresh scholarship in "The Lavender Scare," a likely inspiration for the gay plot line in Drury's "Advise and Consent" was the real-life story of a Wyoming Democrat, Lester Hunt, who shot himself in his Senate office in 1954 after the Republican Campaign Committee threatened to make an issue of his gay son's arrest in Lafayette Park on "morals charges." Those were the dark ages, but it isn't entirely progress that we now have a wider war on gay people, thinly disguised as a debate over the filibuster, cloaked in religion, and counting among its shock troops politicians as utterly bereft of moral bearings as James West. Check out the good old days in "Advise and Consent," not to mention Charles Laughton's valedictory performance as a Bible Belt senator who ultimately puts patriotism over partisanship, and weep.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/opinion/15rich.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fFrank%20Rich
It'll be a Cold Day in Hell !
Targeted judge asks Senate to speak up
Jurist whose family was slain wants lawmakers to condemn remarks
07:30 PM CDT on Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – A federal judge whose family was murdered asked the Senate on Wednesday to condemn harsh remarks about the judiciary by commentators such as evangelist Pat Robertson and members of Congress, saying their words could spark more violence.
"Fostering disrespect for judges can only encourage those that are on the edge, or on the fringe, to exact revenge on a judge who displeases them," U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Her husband and mother were slain in the couple's Chicago home in February. Bart Ross, a 57-year-old unemployed electrician from Chicago, committed suicide in suburban Milwaukee in March after leaving a note confessing to the murders. He had been angered when Judge Lefkow dismissed a malpractice suit he had filed, authorities said.
The judge also was the target of a murder plot by white supremacist Matthew Hale. A federal jury convicted Mr. Hale in April 2004 of soliciting her murder, and he was sentenced last month to 40 years in prison.
Congress should "publicly and persistently repudiate gratuitous attacks on the judiciary" that have occurred in the days since the Terri Schiavo case, Judge Lefkow told the hearing on courthouse security.
After the death of Ms. Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman whose parents unsuccessfully sought to have her feeding tube reinserted, some Republican members of Congress, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land, criticized judges involved in the case.
Referring to a different decision, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said he wondered whether frustration against perceived political decisions by judges "builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence, certainly without any justification."
Mr. Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition and head of the Christian Broadcasting Network, criticized the federal courts this month on ABC's This Week. "Over 100 years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings," he said.
Judge Lefkow said that kind of "harsh rhetoric is truly dangerous."
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/washington/stories/051905dnnatcourthouse.bf271ef7.html
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Why will it be a cold day in hell ? Because some Republicans believe they can say or do anything in the name of God ! for background info on this comment follow the links .....
Brownwood's Mike Conaway & Tom Delay
Freshman legislators stand by DeLay
07:23 AM CDT on Wednesday, May 18, 2005
By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON – To a man, the five rookie Texas Republicans in Congress owe much of their political fortunes to Tom DeLay. The House majority leader pushed the Legislature to carve Texas into districts the newcomers could win, and he generously contributed to their campaigns.
Although each dreamed of coming to Washington, none figured on spending the first 100 days drawn into their benefactor's ethics brawl.
"It's been frustrating," said Rep. Michael McCaul of Austin, a former federal prosecutor. Congress has been highly productive, he said, but "all this good work we've done seems to be overshadowed" by the DeLay dispute.
Texas redistricting led to nearly all of the GOP's gains in House races last fall, while shoring up Mr. DeLay's standing. The House ethics committee admonished him three times last fall, and some Republican lawmakers have grown weary of defending him against more recent allegations involving lobbyist-paid trips and campaign law violations. But the Texas freshmen – conservatives from overwhelmingly Republican districts – remain among Mr. DeLay's staunchest defenders.
"We really know him as a close personal friend, and we really find the accusations unbelievable," said the only Dallas-area freshman, Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell, the former GOP floor leader in the Texas House, who's known Mr. DeLay for two decades. "For us, his leadership is natural. If anything, when someone questions that, we think, how could they possibly think that?"
All five have near-perfect records of siding with Mr. DeLay on roll call votes. Each backed an ethics package that Democrats viewed as an attempt to neuter the process and protect Mr. DeLay.
Two of them – former judges Ted Poe of Humble and Louie Gohmert of Tyler – felt so strongly about the rules, they refused to go along when the GOP retreated last month to end an ethics stalemate.
Such stances aren't likely to bite them politically, because the Legislature packed their districts with Republicans. Mr. Marchant coasted to Congress with nearly two-thirds of the vote. Two others topped 75 percent. The tightest race was Mr. Poe's, who won by 13 percentage points.
DeLay stalwarts
Mr. Marchant said his constituents care more about the energy bill, the inheritance tax and immigration, and he hasn't heard a single DeLay-related question at town hall meetings.
In Grand Prairie, at the corner of the district, Tommy Smelser, a retired telephone worker and former mayor pro tem, takes it in stride that the new congressmen are toeing the line for Mr. DeLay.
"I would be very cognizant of the fact that you don't tug on Superman's cape," he said.
Besides, said Mr. Smelser, who leads a statewide group of Democratic military veterans, "Democrats stick by each other. Republicans stick by each other. Birds of a feather. ... I can't say that that is something I detest about Republicans."
In Duncanville, City Council member Grady Smithey agreed that Mr. DeLay's troubles won't hurt Mr. Marchant, whose stance he faults. "There's too much smoke here for there not to be some fire."
Mr. Smithey was a longtime backer of Martin Frost, the Dallas Democrat who represented the 24th Congressional District for 26 years until the Legislature transformed it into the GOP turf Mr. Marchant now represents. Mr. Frost moved to a neighboring district and lost to Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas.
Mr. Smithey praised Mr. Marchant's efforts to secure highway funding.
"What they did in redistricting was abominable," he said. "But I've been happy with what Kenny has done for our area so far."
Quiet home front
While Mr. Marchant donated $5,000 to the DeLay legal fund, a West Texas colleague, Rep. Mike Conaway of Midland, is among a handful who gave money to another fund set up for the trio of DeLay associates indicted last fall in Austin on charges they funneled corporate cash to state House campaigns. Mr. Conaway gave $5,000 to the defense kitty.
"We live in a country where you're innocent until you're proven guilty," said Mr. Conaway, an accountant who worked for President Bush's former oil company, as chief financial officer for his oil company, Arbusto Energy. He called the allegations a "witch hunt to destroy Tom DeLay and his effectiveness."
Mr. Poe, a former trial judge in Houston, said he hasn't heard much from voters, and he figures they've already made up their minds. "The people that don't like him don't like him; the people do like him still like him," he said.
Mr. McCaul, whose district stretches from Austin to Houston, sits on the House committee that doles out chairmanships and other assignments. As a result, he's worked more closely than most with Mr. DeLay.
"They want to bring him down, but I don't think it's impacting his work," Mr. McCaul said. "It's a tired old story."
Collateral damage
One of the Texas freshmen has taken some heat because of Mr. DeLay, although indirectly.
Mr. Gohmert, a longtime trial judge, departed the bench last year when redistricting left four-term Democrat Max Sandlin vulnerable.
Heavily GOP areas of Smith and Gregg counties make his seat safe for Republicans. But he's still got plenty of "yellow dog" Democrats, and they're none too happy about Mr. DeLay.
"We want to see that pursued, all of us here in East Texas do," said James Wark, Democratic county chairman in Lufkin. "It could hurt him [Mr. Gohmert] down the road."
After revelations that Mr. DeLay had paid his wife and daughter about $500,000 through his campaign committees in the last five years, reporters and DeLay defenders dug through other lawmakers' records.
Mr. Gohmert was among the handful that turned up with relatives on the payroll.
Since last July, he has paid his wife, Kathy, $30,376, including a $7,500 bonus after his victory. Only campaign manager Keats Norfleet earned more. Mrs. Gohmert now fills that role as the sole member of a skeletal post-election staff, drawing $2,862 a month.
The congressman defends the arrangement, saying his wife gave up a full-time teaching job in February 2004 to help him run.
"By July, with neither one of us working, it was only fair to pay somebody that was working 60 to 80 hours a week, who knew the district, who people liked as well or better than me, and who I could completely trust," he said. "Somebody like her, with an MBA, she's being underpaid."
Mr. Gohmert has also drawn flak for defying Speaker Dennis Hastert on the decision to revert to the old ethics procedures. Only 20 GOP lawmakers, seven of them Texans, refused to go along.
The Longview News-Journal accused Mr. Gohmert of grandstanding, noting that even Mr. DeLay voted to return to the old rules.
Mr. Gohmert is unrepentant. "They were fair rules in January" when the House adopted them, he said. "They're still fair rules ... If you look at it, I'm the one who's not the hypocrite."
But in Smith County, where Mr. Gohmert collected one-third of his votes, Democratic chief Karen Roberts said she's not surprised he's turned out to be a strong DeLay ally.
"He owes his job to DeLay. They all owe their jobs to DeLay," she said. And she doubts it will cost him politically.
"In Smith County, a Republican would have to commit an ax murder on the public square before anyone would get upset."
E-mail tgillman@dallasnews.com
THE TIES THAT BIND
A look at Texas' five freshman representatives and their take on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose redistricting efforts helped the Republican newcomers win election:
KENNY MARCHANT, Coppell
Received $11,000* from Mr. DeLay; gave $5,000 to the DeLay defense fund
"We really know him as a close personal friend, and we really find the accusations unbelievable."
TED POE, Humble
Received $5,000 from Mr. DeLay
"You got accusations against Tom DeLay ú prove 'em. Where I come from you just don't hang a guy until after the trial."
LOUIE GOHMERT, Tyler
Received $10,000 from Mr. DeLay
"Depends on what the ethics investigation turns up. In the meantime, there are some other people that need investigating."
MICHAEL McCAUL, Austin
Received $10,000 from Mr. DeLay
"You hear all sides of this issue, to be candid. But I can tell you he is the majority leader and he is from Texas, and that's a great asset for the state."
MIKE CONAWAY, Midland
Received $10,000 from Mr. DeLay, gave $5,000 to the fund set up for indicted DeLay aides
"We've had a rogue district attorney in Austin, Texas, [Democrat Ronnie Earle] that has been trying to bring down Tom DeLay for two years."
* Includes a $1,000 donation in February 2004 to the Marchant state House campaign from Texans for a Republican Majority. All other donations came from Americans for a Republican Majority.
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/washington/stories/051805dnnatfreshmen.ba67ca89.html
"SLUT" Banned ! "STUD" Walks ?
Pregnant student barred from graduation announces herself
By The Associated Press
(5/18/05 - MONTGOMERY, AL) — A pregnant student who was banned from graduation at her Roman Catholic high school announced her own name and walked across the stage anyway at the close of the program.
Alysha Cosby's decision prompted cheers and applause Tuesday from many of her fellow seniors at St. Jude Educational Institute.
But her mother and aunt were escorted out of the church by police after Cosby headed back to her seat.
"I can't believe something like this is happening in 2005," said her mother, Sheila Cosby. "My daughter has been through a lot and I am proud of her. She deserved to walk, and she did."
The school's guidance counselor delivered Cosby's degree to her house earlier Tuesday, but she still wanted to participate.
"I worked hard throughout high school and I wanted to walk with my class," she said.
Cosby was told in March that she could no longer attend school because of safety concerns, and her name was not listed in the graduation program.
The father of Cosby's child, also a senior at the school, was allowed to participate in graduation.
source: http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/news/nat_world/051805_APnat_pregnant.html
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Note from Steve: I say good for Alysha. I find it interesting that boy gets to walk while girl gets banned. Talk about your mixed and screwed up messages: Boy Stud, Girl Slut ! I say Hypocricy.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Football Banned ?
Liberal Bible-Thumping
By Nicholas D. Kristof
The New York Times
Sunday 15 May 2005
Even aside from his arguments that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and that St. Paul was a self-hating gay, the new book by a former Episcopal bishop of Newark is explosive.
John Shelby Spong, the former bishop, tosses a hand grenade into the cultural wars with "The Sins of Scripture," which examines why the Bible - for all its message of love and charity - has often been used through history to oppose democracy and women's rights, to justify slavery and even mass murder.
It's a provocative question, and Bishop Spong approaches it with gusto. His mission, he says, is "to force the Christian Church to face its own terrifying history that so often has been justified by quotations from 'the Scriptures.' "
This book is long overdue, because one of the biggest mistakes liberals have made has been to forfeit battles in which faith plays a crucial role. Religion has always been a central current of American life, and it is becoming more important in politics because of the new Great Awakening unfolding across the United States.
Yet liberals have tended to stay apart from the fray rather than engaging in it. In fact, when conservatives quote from the Bible to make moral points, they tend to quote very selectively. After all, while Leviticus bans gay sex, it also forbids touching anything made of pigskin (is playing football banned?) - and some biblical passages seem not so much morally uplifting as genocidal.
"Can we really worship the God found in the Bible who sent the angel of death across the land of Egypt to murder the firstborn males in every Egyptian household?" Bishop Spong asks. Or what about 1 Samuel 15, in which God is quoted as issuing orders to wipe out all the Amalekites: "Kill both man and woman, child and infant." Hmmm. Tough love, or war crimes? As for the New Testament, Revelation 19:17 has an angel handing out invitations to a divine dinner of "the flesh of all people."
Bishop Spong, who has also taught at Harvard Divinity School, argues that while Christianity historically tried to block advances by women, Jesus himself treated women with unusual dignity and was probably married to Mary Magdalene.
Christianity may have become unfriendly to women's rights partly because, in its early years, it absorbed an antipathy for sexuality from the Neoplatonists. That led to an emphasis on the perpetual virginity of Mary, with some early Christian thinkers even trying to preserve the Virgin Mary's honor by raising the possibility that Jesus had been born through her ear.
The squeamishness about sexuality led the church into such absurdities as a debate about "prelapsarian sex": the question of whether Adam and Eve might have slept together in the Garden of Eden, at least if they had stayed longer. St. Augustine's dour answer was: Maybe, but they wouldn't have enjoyed it. In modern times, this same discomfort with sex has led some conservative Christians to a hatred of gays and a hostility toward condoms, even to fight AIDS.
Bishop Spong particularly denounces preachers who selectively quote Scripture against homosexuality. He also cites various textual reasons for concluding (not very persuasively) that St. Paul was "a frightened gay man condemning other gay people so that he can keep his own homosexuality inside the rigid discipline of his faith."
The bishop also tries to cast doubt on the idea that Judas betrayed Jesus. He notes that the earliest New Testament writings, of Paul and the source known as Q, don't mention a betrayal by Judas. Bishop Spong contends that after the destruction of Jewish Jerusalem in A.D. 70, early Christians curried favor with Roman gentiles by blaming the Crucifixion on Jewish authorities - nurturing two millennia of anti-Semitism that bigots insisted was biblically sanctioned.
Some of the bishop's ideas strike me as more provocative than persuasive, but at least he's engaged in the debate. When liberals take on conservative Christians, it tends to be with insults - by deriding them as jihadists and fleeing the field. That's a mistake. It's entirely possible to honor Christian conservatives for their first-rate humanitarian work treating the sick in Africa or fighting sex trafficking in Asia, and still do battle with them over issues like gay rights.
Liberals can and should confront Bible-thumping preachers on their own terms, for the scriptural emphasis on justice and compassion gives the left plenty of ammunition. After all, the Bible depicts Jesus as healing lepers, not slashing Medicaid.
source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051505F.shtml
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Brownwood National Day of Prayer & WWJD ?
Abilene Reporter News - Letter to the Editor
Wwjd ?
May 11, 2005
After reading ''Circles of Prayer'' in the Friday, May 6, Abilene Reporter News, I asked myself which National Day of Prayer event Jesus would have chosen to attend while in the Big Country. Would Jesus have chosen Abilene's ''inclusive'' or ''exclusive'' event? According to the Friday Dallas Morning News, President Bush chose to pray ''in front of an East Room filled with people of many different faiths.''
Thankfully, I worship an inclusive God, whom I believe attended both of Abilene's events, was at the White House and even chose to spend part of his day with me. Wow!
Steve Harris
Brownwood
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/op_letters_editor/article/0,1874,ABIL_7984_3768258,00.html
Will KXYL's Connie and Marion read the last quote ?
Manzo favors house seizure in gun cases
New Jersey Journal | March 30, 2005
By Michaelangelo Conte
The spate of slayings over the first three months of the year has prompted Assemblyman Louis Manzo, D-Jersey City, to introduce a bill which would make it possible to confiscate a home or car in which an illegal firearm is found - even if the gun doesn't belong to the owner.
"Simply put, we cannot afford to lose another life, at a time when it has become a daily routine to read about another life lost in our neighborhoods as a result of gun violence," Manzo says in a letter asking state Assembly Speaker Albio Sires, D-West New York, to expedite a vote on the bill.
"Now is the time to send a message that the consequences for harboring an illegal firearm are severe and will not be tolerated by our law-makers, communities or families," Manzo says in the letter.
Manzo said the bill will make the stakes so high that people will "think twice about driving a friend (they) know carries a gun, and about allowing a family member to harbor an illegal gun in the home."
Even if the bill were passed, however, it would likely be challenged as unconstitutional, said Frank Askin, director of the Constitutional Clinic at Rutgers University in Newark.
"I'm skeptical the New Jersey Supreme Court would uphold it under the state constitution," Askin said yesterday. "I think under the state constitution there would at least have to be a innocent owner exception.
"The New Jersey Supreme Court has been much more protective of private property rights than the Supreme Court has been in recent years," Askin said.
Askin said confiscating a person's house, especially in a case where the gun found did not belong to the owner, would likely be seen by the court as excessive.
"Taking the house is so disproportionate to the crime, I think it would constitute cruel and unusual punishment," Askin said. "I would certainly say the American Civil Liberties Union would challenge that."
Monday, May 09, 2005
"Religious Zealots", Damage Control and a "Great Misunderstanding" !
May 8, 2005, 10:44PM
Pastor's welcome can't heal scars
Church members ousted for political beliefs say only his exit will do
By PAUL NOWELL
Associated Press
WAYNESVILLE, N.C. - Calling it a "great misunderstanding," the pastor of a small church who led the charge to remove nine members for their political beliefs tried to welcome them back Sunday, but some insisted he must leave for the wounds to heal.
The Rev. Chan Chandler didn't directly address the controversy during the service at East Waynesville Baptist Church, but issued a statement afterward through his attorney saying the church does not care about its members' political affiliations.
"No one has ever been voted from the membership of this church due to an individual's support or lack of support for a political party or candidate," he said.
Nine members said they were ousted during a church gathering last week by about 40 others because they refused to support President Bush. They attended Sunday's service with their lawyer and many supporters.
Chandler noted their presence in his welcome to the congregation, saying, "I'm glad to see you all here. We are here today to worship the Lord. I hope this is what you are here for."
But Chandler's statement and his welcome didn't convince those who were voted out that things would soon change.
"This all started over politics and our right to vote for whoever we wanted to," said Thelma Lowe, who has been attending the church for 42 years. She and her husband Frank, a deacon at the church for 35 years, were among those voted out.
"Things will never be the same here until he leaves."
Chandler, 33, has been at the church for less than three years.
The ousted members have said Chandler told them during last year's presidential campaign that anyone who planned to vote for Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry needed to leave the church.
"He needs to leave," said Marlene Casey, 42, a lifelong member. "A lot of blood, sweat and tears have been shed by the people he told to leave."
Added Lewis Inman, a deacon at the church who said he was voted out last week: "He could have apologized and made everything right. He's not man enough."
Chandler said he and his wife have received calls from around the nation — some of them threatening — since his politics in the pulpit made the news.
source: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3172861
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Note the similiarities in Chandler's message (diatribe) to Brownwood's KXYL Talking Head/Brown County Republican Party Spokesperson ("Prophet") James Williamson. I believe Chandler just got busted for exposing in the light of day what has been going on within the walls of Churches for years (a litmus test ?). I'll call it "Legislating from the Pulpit" for those who are focused on the term "Legislating from the Bench" ! I don't consider it a "great misunderstanding" to understand what religious zealots are thinking, preaching and pushing !
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Saturday, May 07, 2005
Pastor Chan Sounds like "KXYL's Prophet" James Williamson !
Democrats Voted Out of Baptist Church
The Associated Press
Saturday 07 May 2005
Waynesville, N.C. - Some in Pastor Chan Chandler's flock wish he had a little less zeal for the GOP. Members of the small East Waynesville Baptist Church say Chandler led an effort to kick out congregants who didn't support President Bush. Nine members were voted out at a Monday church meeting in this mountain town, about 120 miles west of Charlotte.
"He's the kind of pastor who says do it my way or get out," said Selma Morris, the church treasurer who was among those voted out. "He's real negative all the time."
Chandler didn't return a message left by The Associated Press at his home Friday, and several calls to the church went unanswered. He told WLOS-TV in Asheville that the actions were not politically motivated.
The station also reported that 40 others in the 100-member congregation resigned in protest after Monday's vote.
During the presidential election last year, Chandler told the congregation that anyone who planned to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry should either leave the church or repent, said former member Lorene Sutton.
Some church members left after Chandler made his ultimatum in October, Morris said.
George Bullard, associate executive director-treasurer for Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, told the Asheville Citizen-Times that a pastor has every right to disallow memberships if a church's bylaws allow for the pastor to establish criteria for membership.
"Membership is a local church issue," he said. "It is not something the state convention would enter into."
He added that the nine members were not legally terminated because Monday's meeting was supposed to be a deacons meeting, not a business meeting. They have a lawyer looking into the situation, he said.
The head of the North Carolina Democratic Party sharply criticized the pastor Friday, saying Chandler jeopardized his church's tax-free status by openly supporting a candidate for president.
"If these reports are true, this minister is not only acting extremely inappropriately by injecting partisan politics into a house of worship, but he is also potentially breaking the law," Chairman Jerry Meek said.
Doris Wilson, one of Chandler's neighbors and a member of First Baptist Church in Waynesville, said God doesn't play partisan politics.
"I hate to see the church suffer like that," she said. "God doesn't care whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. It just hurts to see that going on."
source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/050705Z.shtml
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James Williamson is also a spokesperson for the Brown County Republican Party who represented the Republican Party in front of Brownwood Elementary students with the same messages.
Friday, May 06, 2005
WWJP - Where Would Jesus Pray ?
Circles of Prayer
Christian group, Abilene Interfaith Council gather at separate sites to pray for city, country
By Brian Bethel and Jerry Daniel Reed / Reporter-News Staff Writers
May 6, 2005
One group consisted of people of various faiths. Another was comprised of Christians only.
But together they lifted their voices in prayer for the well-being of the nation and the city they all call home.
The annual National Day of Prayer was observed in communities across the land Thursday. But the observance in Abilene differed from years past when one service, featuring Christian pastors, was held on the lawn in front of City Hall.
This year, the Abilene Interfaith Council proposed one large service featuring representatives from all the faiths represented on the council, including various Christian traditions.
But Pray Big Country, comprised of local pastors, already had a service planned. The Christian group opted to move from its traditional site at City Hall to Everman Park in the downtown area.
About 80 people crowded around the front of Abilene City Hall to participate in the Abilene Interfaith Council's ceremony, while about 200 gathered in Everman Park for the Christian-based service.
As the sun peeked occasionally through the clouds, those of varying faiths gathered at City Hall offered hope for peace and understanding between all creeds.
''Oh God, kind Lord, unite all. Let the religions agree, and make the nations one, so that they may see each other as one family and the whole earth as one home,'' said Sammie Garza, a member of the Baha'2/3 Faith.
Archana Patel raised her voice in a Hindu prayer, a flowing melody of tones that composed, in her words, ''a prayer for the whole world, not just the human beings, but for every small life that we see.''
The day was peaceful, although a small group of young people wearing ''Jesus Crew'' T-shirts passed out Bible tracts and did not participate in a second part of the ceremony, in which those who gathered symbolically broke bread together.
The Abilene Interfaith Council started five years ago when the originators decided to invite one person of another faith to lunch regularly. The group now has about 100 people on its mailing list, said the Rev. Roz Thomas, associate rector of the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest and a founder of the AIC.
A few blocks away from the City Hall gathering, about 200 people filtered into Everman Park to hear eight Christian speakers intercede on behalf of the city and the Abilene area. They prayed for families, soldiers, government leaders, educators and students.
With occasional shouts of ''Amen!'' and ''Yes!'' and with arms uplifted while singing praise hymns, the crowd required little encouragement from the speakers to participate.
The Rev. Scott Beard, pastor of FountainGate Fellowship, seized on the park's fountain as a symbol of the blessings and spiritual revival that he invoked for Abilene.
The Rev. Chuck Farina, pastor of New Hope Assembly, forthrightly asked for material blessings for the city and its neighbors.
''We call in economic development to the city,'' he said. ''(God) wants to bring prosperity to the righteous.''
Unity lies within reach, but only through God, said the Rev. Kelvin J. Kelley, pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church.
''Unity cannot come unless His kingdom comes,'' Kelley said.
The National Day of Prayer was established in its current format in 1952 by congressional proclamation and signed by President Harry S. Truman.
Contact staff writer Brian Bethel at 676-6739 or bethelb@reporternews.com. Contact staff writer Jerry Reed at 676-6769 or reedj@reporternews.com.
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_3756681,00.html
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Praise for event
May 7, 2005
I am a Christian who attended the National Day of Prayer celebration on the steps of City Hall, hosted by the Abilene Interfaith Council. The meeting was respectful, positive and worshipful. Prayers for community peace, unity, harmony and mutual understanding, as well as for the cessation of war, care for the environment and wisdom and protection for our elected leaders were offered to God by representatives of 10 diverse faiths or denominations in our city. Sharing bread together with these persons who come from different cultural and religious backgrounds, yet who equally desire that freedom, justice and well-being be experienced by all our citizens both nationally and locally, was a meaningful way to conclude this genuinely hopeful program. To characterize the Abilene Interfaith Council or those who identify with it in a negative way is unfortunate. They have demonstrated a love for all. They are inclusive. Their very organizational motto centers around peaceful conversation. I know these people personally and appreciate them immensely, and there is not a militant extremist among them!
Rob Sellers
Abilene
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/op_letters_editor/article/0,1874,ABIL_7984_3759004,00.html
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Prayer Day divided our community
By Ken Ellsworth
May 8, 2005
Two groups met at noon Thursday in Abilene to celebrate the National Day of Prayer with prayer services.
But they did not pray together. They prayed apart, sadly separated, it seemed to me.
The separation caused me to wonder.
If it is true that a ''family that prays together stays together,'' could it be applied to a community? ''The community that prays together stays together.''
Probably not, and it's probably not necessary. That may be why Abilene has hundreds of churches. People like to pray with kith, kin and kind.
I attended some of each service Thursday.
One group met at Everman Park, drawing about 200 people. It was exclusively Christian, in fact, evangelical Christian. The service was organized by Pray Big Country, a group of local pastors.
The other group met in front of City Hall. About 80 attended. Its participants included people of the following faiths: Baha'i, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Unitarianism. This service was organized by the Abilene Interfaith Council.
The Christian service began with praise songs. Many participants raised their arms in the air, palms up as if they were receiving love radiating down from the heavens. This was not the kind of worship service that I grew up with. The music was unfamiliar and accompanied by guitars and percussion.
I grew up with J.S. Bach fugues played on church organs. It was inspiring. I'm not sure praise service music is as good. For me, trading in Bach for praise music might be something akin to trading in Shakespeare for comic books. Maybe I'm an old fuddy-duddy. Well, there's no ''maybe'' about it.
There were some speakers. Most emphasized their belief that the only path to salvation is through Jesus and that other faiths are in error.
I see how people can think that way, but I am usually thinking more like this: ''In matters of religion, the only absolute wrong is to believe without doubt that you are absolutely right.'' But that sort of thinking could be wrong.
One pastor recalled the visit to Abilene several years ago of a Buddhist monk. The monk blessed the city during a ritual. The pastor on Thursday hinted that the Buddhist blessing might have brought bad things to Abilene, including the drought.
I don't know how the pastor can believe that. I'm quite sure it rains in Buddhist countries.
At City Hall, the atmosphere was much different. People of different faiths and denominations offered prayers. For me, there was warmth to it.
It was lovely to watch people of obviously different faiths hugging each other, sharing each other's humanity and the need of most to believe.
At the end of the ceremony, loaves of bread were passed out to symbolize that we all can sit down and break bread together regardless of our differences. Almost everybody had a bite.
At the back of the crowd 10 or 12 young people wore shirts that said ''Jesus Crew.'' I had seen the same shirts earlier at Everman Park.
For some reason, those young people refused to participate in the breaking of the bread. They weren't obnoxious about it. In fact, they were polite. They just quietly turned away.
I don't know, but I think Jesus would have had a bite.
Contact Ken Ellsworth at ellsworthk@reporternews.com or 676-6777.
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_lc_columns/article/0,1874,ABIL_8856_3761552,00.html
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Beware Wolves in Sheeps Clothing ! KXYL Cloaking ?
After 3-Year Probe, Spokane Paper Alleges Sex Abuse by Mayor
By E&P Staff
Published: May 05, 2005 12:35 PM ET
NEW YORK After three years of investigation, the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., today presented a package of stories that include allegations of sexual misconduct by the city's mayor, Jim West.
The probe grew out of the paper's reporting on a sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in 2002. Rumors circulated then that West had sexually molested young boys when he served as a Boy Scout leader (and a sheriff's deputy) in the late 1970s. Two of his closest friends then, one a sheriff's deputy and the other a Scout leader, committed suicide after those earlier allegations of sex abuse were raised.
Today, the newspaper revealed that Robert J. Galliher claimed in a court deposition that West molested him in the mid-1970s, when he was a boy. A second man, Michael G. Grant Jr., also accused West of sexual abuse during the same period at a Boy Scout.
Stories by the newspaper in 2003 generated tips about West that staff reporters Bill Morlin and Karen Dorn Steele then spent two years investigating, using public records, court documents, interviews, and forensic evidence.
It led them to conclude, as the paper's editor, Steven A. Smith, described it, "that West has led a secret life for more than 25 years. Beyond the serious allegations of sexual abuse, West had been using his position in the Legislature to block gay-rights legislation. And he has been trolling the Internet for young lovers while serving as mayor of Spokane, offering gifts and favors."
West, a Republican legislator who was elected mayor in 2003, defeating a local investigative journalist named Tom Grant, has denied the most serious allegations while acknowledging his Internet activity, Smith wrote. The two men accusing him of molestation have both spent time in prison.
The paper presented a large package online, including excerpts from interviews with the two accusers, a full assessment of West's career and anti-gay public stance, and a detailed timeline.
An article by Steele opened this way: "In an Internet chat room last New Year’s Eve where he discussed his recent date with an 18-year-old man, Spokane Mayor Jim West criticized the 'sex Nazis' who try to regulate private sexual behavior. For years, that’s exactly what West tried to do in Olympia [the state capital[]."
Editor Smith wrote, "This is not a story about sexual orientation. This is a story about alleged sexual abuse of children and misuse of power and authority. Using the trappings of office to lure and groom young sex partners, barely of legal age, is the public's business whether those potential partners are men or women."
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Find this article at:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000911146
Brownwood & National Day of Prayer
Thursday May 5, 2005
News
National Day of Prayer set on Thursday
By Candace Cooksey Fulton -- Brownwood Bulletin
Christians in the area have two opportunities on Thursday to share with fellow believers in observing the National Day of Prayer.
May 5 is designated as the National Day of Prayer, and in observance here, citizens are invited to gather at noon by the grounds of Brownwood City Hall, 501 Center Ave. Dr. Frankie Rainey will lead the prayer time there.
From 4 until 6 p.m. a 12-station prayer walk around the perimeter of Coggin Park has been arranged. Lynda Low, a staff member at Living Word Christian Academy, who has helped organize the annual walk, said those wishing to take the walk, may begin at any time during that 2-hour period. However, most will meet at the pavilion at 4 p.m. and walk with others. The 12 stations each have a dedication, Low explained. For instance the first is designated as a prayer station for the nation, President George W. Bush and the military; the second station is the state of Texas and Gov. Rick Perry; and the third is for the communities and home towns of those joining the walk.
Also at Coggin Park, beginning at 4:30 p.m., a series of soloists and choirs will sing patriotic and prayerful hymns, which will be interspersed with scripture readings.
Kelly Crenshaw, Tom Zintgraff, associate pastor at Living Word, and Bill Allen, associate pastor and Coggin Avenue Baptist Church, will do the readings. The musical performances include Annette Carroll, who will sing her own copyrighted version of "God Bless the USA" and "Amazing Grace;" Carolyn Webb, of Greater Faith Church, who will sing "Lord, Listen to Your Children Praying" and "Still I Rise;" a group from New Beginnings Church will sing "Days of Elijah;" and the program concludes with Except for Grace, a group from Coggin Avenue Baptist Church, who will sing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," "Oh Beautiful America," "In God We Trust," "God Bless America, Once More" and "Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb."
Low said some are unable to make the prayer walk and some will choose to forego the walk, but want to attend for the musical offering. She said some bleacher seating will be available for them.
source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2005/05/04/news/news03.txt
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Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Babies in Attics - Brownwood/Bangs to London
This is
LONDON
04/05/05 - News and city section
Woman arrested over dead babies in attics
By Sarah Getty, Metro
A former nurse was arrested last night after police discovered the bodies of three newborn babies in two attics.
Anne Mahoney, 64, was first questioned six weeks ago after a baby's corpse was found wrapped in bags in a loft.
When police searched the attic of her own home yesterday, they found the remains of two more infants. They had been 'bagged up' in a similar way, said an officer.
Detectives sealed off the two-bedroomed council house in a cul-de-sac on the Gurnos estate in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. Other properties are to be searched.
One officer said: 'This has come as quite a shock and we are not sure what we are dealing with at the moment.'
The first baby was found on March 20 by a family moving into their new home.
The father was putting empty packing cases into the attic when he found the remains in a plastic bag.
He thought the bones were a rabbit's before realising in horror it was a baby.
Pathologists said the body - that of a fullterm child - was hidden years ago but failed to establish a cause of death.
Forensic tests were being carried out on the latest corpses last night. One neighbour said: 'This place has a bad reputation but everyone is shocked by the discovery.
'It was bad enough when one baby was found. This is too horrific to think about.'
Residents said Mrs Mahoney worked as a nurse at the Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil, then became a carer for the elderly until her retirement.
Find this story at http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/18349660?version=1
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AP Wire | 10/27/2003 | Authorities continue probe into discovery ...
... whose mummified remains were found in an attic were talking ... race, what sex, what
age the babies were or ... owns Steves' Market Deli in downtown Brownwood, said he ...
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/7118694.htm
Hook em Horns & Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter Heckled in Austin......
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" Cry Me A River " Ann Coulter:
President Bush " Milking " a Male Horse ?
Where are the KXYL Talking Heads on this one ? They've made it their legacy to speak to salacious issues with sexual conatations on a daily basis but they seem to be losing their tried and true talents to generate dollars around issues like this when they can spin it into a partisan weapon with the intent of damaging Democrats, Liberals or anyone else who is left of their extreme right position. Maybe their counterpart, Steve Nash @ the Brownwood Bulletin, will pick up the story and run with it . But don't count on it, he will most likely be covering the PETA activist in Abilene since it involves partial nudity, PETA, and Religion !
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Dallas Morning News Letter to the Editor
Hypocritical defense
As always, the neocons reveal their duplicitous hypocrisy in defending Laura Bush's jokes at the White House Correspondents dinner. Would they defend the first lady so vociferously if she were, say, Hillary Clinton?
The real Christian right is outraged because Mrs. Bush's jokes were lewd, suggested homosexual man/equine relations and ridiculed her husband, who, according to their Christian doctrine, is lord and master. She spit all over their "Christian values"!
The neocons will tell the true believers to not get their Deuteronomies in a wad about it. They should only get upset when Karl Rove tells them to!
John Rainone, Dallas
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/letters/stories/050405dnediwedletters.71bfa45b.html
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Laura Bush cracks risque jokes at the White House correspondents dinner
Sun May 1, 6:02 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US First Lady Laura Bush cracked risque jokes and ribbed her husband and his family at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner late Saturday.
President George W. Bush began to recount a joke at the annual event, where US leaders are expected to show their humorous side, when he was "interrupted" by Laura Bush.
"I've been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting there. Well, I've got a few things I want to say for a change," she said, to great applause.
"George always says he's delighted to come to these press dinners. Baloney! He's usually in bed by now," she said. "I said to him the other day, George, if you really want to end tyranny in the world, you're gonna have to stay up later."
Laura Bush joked that on a typical evening the president is asleep by 9 pm, "and I'm watching (the racy television show) 'Desperate Housewives'."
The first lady went on to quip that one night she went out to Chippendales, a male strip bar, with Vice President Dick Cheney's wife Lynne, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and top Bush aide Karen Hughes.
"I wouldn't even mention it, except (Supreme Court Justices) Ruth Ginsberg and Sandra Day O'Connor saw us there," she said. "I won't tell you what happened. But Lynn's secret service code name is now 'dollar bill.'"
Laura Bush also joked about the president's mother Barbara Bush. "People think she's a sweet grandmotherly aunt Bea type. She's actually more like (fictional Mafia capo) Don Corleone."
She said that that her husband actually knew little about ranching when they bought their ranch in Crawford, Texas.
"I'm proud of George. He's learned a lot about ranching since that first year, when he tried to milk the horse. What's worse, it was a male horse," she said.
The president now often spends time at the ranch clearing brush and cutting trails. "George's answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with a chainsaw. Which I think is why he and Cheney and (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld get along so well."
Celebrity guests at the event included Hollywood actors Richard Gere and Jane Fonda, and rap star LL Cool J.
source: http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050501/pl_afp/usbushmedia_050501220236
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Victor Cristales / Reporter-News
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals members Julie Kelton, left, and an almost naked Brandi Valladolid make their plea Tuesday to Abilenians not to attend the upcoming Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus. They spent an hour protesting at the intersection of South 32nd Street and Buffalo Gap Road in Abilene.
Baring a Message
PETA activist strips down to protest circus' treatment of animals
By Staci Semrad / Reporter-News Staff Writer
May 4, 2005
Motorists gawked and police kept watch as a woman exposed herself Tuesday on Buffalo Gap Road to protest the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus.
The circus comes to Abilene May 19-22.
Animal activist Brandi Valladolid, 29, removed her silky red robe, put shackles on her ankles and wrists, and stretched out in front of a banner that read: ''Circus Animals Shackled, Lonely, Beaten.''
Valladolid works as a campaign coordinator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and traveled from the organization's headquarters in Norfolk, Va., to shared her message in Abilene.
With her back to traffic and bearing mock scars, Valladolid sat wearing black panties through the noon hour under cloudy skies and a temperature of 55 degrees at the intersection of South 32nd Street and Buffalo Gap Road.
She covered her top half with her long brown hair and wore pasties.
''As long as they keep their essentials covered, we're OK,'' said Abilene police Sgt. Joe Tauer, who was among a few police officers monitoring the situation.
People driving by honked, waved and smiled. Many pulled out their cell phones or camcorders to record the moment.
Fully clothed and standing with Valladolid, PETA intern Julie Kelton, 19, held a video monitor with footage showing alleged abuse of animals in a variety of circuses, including Ringling Bros.
Ringling Bros. condemns animal abuse, said Melinda Rosser, a Florida-based spokeswoman for the show. She said that Ringling Bros. is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding circus animal treatment, but she could not speak about matters currently being investigated.
Ringling Bros. trainers handle elephants with an ankus - a tool with a spike and a hook on the end, but it is not painful to the animals, she said.
''It doesn't benefit us to endanger anything that has to do with our animals,'' she said. ''Our animals are a regular extension of our family.''
Ringling Bros. last performed in Abilene more than a decade ago, Rosser said. She was unhappy with Tuesday's protest and coverage.
''I can see why this is news in Abilene, but for us it is not,'' she said.
Rosser wasn't the only one upset by Valladolid's demonstration.
''We totally disagree with her doing this ... for moral reasons,'' said Stacie Murrah, who was driving by with her husband and complained of the proximity to Jackson Elementary.
Several people stopped and got out of their vehicles either to commend or scold the demonstrators.
One young woman handed Valladolid a brochure about Jesus and admonished her for causing passers-by to commit the sin of ''adultery.''
''Actually, I was born a Christian, and I'm still practicing,'' Valladolid said. ''... I'm not causing people to sin. You know what's a sin is people are beating animals for entertainment's sake.''
Area resident Vicky Faulks, 60, watched from across the street.
''We're shocked the way you can run around without your top,'' she said.
Another neighbor, Joe Stalls, who said he was ''over 60,'' didn't like the display.''They're abusing our sensibilities by what they're doing there,'' he said.
Chris Garrison, 28, of Clyde, was less bothered.
''As long as she's in compliance with the law, that's her right,'' he said.
Valladolid said people saw no more of her skin than they would see at the beach. She said she stripped down to attract media and public attention to her message, and succeeded in doing so.
''We've gotten a lot of thumbs-up,'' she said.
Contact staff writer Staci Semrad at 676-6734 or semrads@reporternews.com.
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_3750301,00.html
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
KXYL's Connie & Marion: "There's just not much news today" ?
There's a whole lot of news that they don't want you to hear about and the one posted below is one of them.
Posted on Mon, May. 02, 2005
The press takes a pass on 'Jeff Gannon'
By Carol Towarnicky
towarnc@phillynews.com
IF A REPORTER who doubled as a gay hooker had visited the Clinton White House nearly 200 times, think it would have made the news?
If "Jeff Gannon"/James D. Guckert had been unveiled, so to speak, as a liberal imposter who lobbed softball questions at Clinton administration press briefings, he would be as infamous as Michael Schiavo.
And if 39 of those White House visits were mysteriously unrelated to his "reporting" duties, imagine what innuendoes would be issuing forth from Planet Limbaugh. Imagine the organized phone call campaign demanding newspapers and TV stations report the story.
But Gannon/Guckert isn't being unveiled or innuendoed or even blipped on media radar screens, even among liberals.
Last Sunday was the third time in recent weeks that I came across hyper-informed liberals who have not heard the first thing about Guckert, who used the name "Jeff Gannon" to pose as a newsman from a Web site that was in reality a Republican Party front. Gannon advertised his second job as a male escort on Web sites complete with full frontal photos.
For months, Gannon/Guckert asked obviously biased questions at press briefings. He was conveniently ready when Bush spokesman Scott McClellan was being pressed too hard by reporters. Apparently none of those reporters ever thought to check out the obvious ringer in their midst. It was only when Gannon asked one of his trademark questions at a nationally televised presidential press conference in February that some bloggers noticed.
It didn't take much digging for them to uncover Gannon's not-so-secret identity and ask the obvious: Did the Secret Service have this information? Did the White House? But the story went nowhere then and is going nowhere now.
Just last week, a Freedom of Information Act search requested by two members of Congress revealed that Gannon/Guckert visited the White House 196 times - 39 of them days when there were no press briefings. While liberal blogs made much of the news, a Nexis search found that the Associated Press gave it only three paragraphs, which were picked up by only two newspapers nationwide. CNN mentioned the story only to say that the blogs had it. On MSNBC's "Countdown," Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank offered excuses for the 14 times that Gannon/Guckert's entries or exits weren't recorded by White House security and host Keith Olbermann seemed apologetic for bringing it up.
If reporters aren't worried about imposter journalists, at least they should smell a good story in a possible White House security breach.
With an explosion of media, much of it partisan, the role of actual journalism becomes even more critical. Yet the bright line between news and fair comment on one hand versus manipulation and propaganda on the other has all but disappeared.
Of course, Gannon/Guckert was only the most flamboyant of phony journalists to grace our airwaves in recent months: There are the paid hacks who got government money to laud government programs in their columns; there were the government video news releases made to look like actual TV reports - and which were run on many smaller stations.
Journalists get hopping-mad if CIA agents masquerade as reporters in war zones - it puts them at high risk. Yet these same journalists seem almost blasé at the assault on truth zones every day at the White House, on Capitol Hill and on a TV screen near you.
At a time when the radicals of the right, aided by the White House, seek to eviscerate constitutional protections, the news media have found a curious way to protect the First Amendment: Don't worry that Congress will abridge freedom of the press; The press will do the job of abridging itself all on its own.
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Carol Towarnicky is the chief editorial writer of the Daily News. E-mail towarnc@phillynews.com.
source: http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/11541660.htm
Brownwood Airport Crash ( Glideslope & Lighting ? )
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The Visual Trap ?
Monday, May 02, 2005
Birds of a Feather: Brownwood's KXYL and G. Gordon Liddy
Did MSNBC Know Liddy's History ?
Host Once Advocated Killing Government Agents
Action Alert (4/29/05)
In an April 27 debate about extreme talk radio rhetoric, MSNBC's Scarborough Country turned to an unusual guest: right-wing talker G. Gordon Liddy, who ten years ago called for the killing of federal agents.
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" inflammatory talk radio has become and what is required to get good ratings ".
Scarborough Responds to FAIR
Activism Update (5/2/05)
On April 29, FAIR issued an action alert pointing out that G. Gordon Liddy, who appeared on a Scarborough Country segment on violent talk radio rhetoric (MSNBC, 4/27/05), had on his own radio show advocated shooting federal agents. FAIR received this response from the show's host, Joe Scarborough:
Just saw your site's write up on my show with G. Gordon Liddy.
I admit that I am shocked that I did not have personal knowledge of Liddy's statement. I remembered Bill Clinton blaming Liddy for Oklahoma City but obviously did not know the back story. As one who has stayed on top of pop culture and media since my teenage years, I am embarrassed I did not recall that shocking statement.
Secondly, I am surprised our team did not have this information at hand when we did the segment. It was an embarrassing oversight and one that I will mention on an upcoming show.
Ironically, the point of the segment was to focus on how inflammatory talk radio has become and what is required to get good ratings. Having the Liddy comments on air was a great opportunity that we lost.
Thanks for your work to hold reporters and journalists accountable. Such a service is invaluable for those of us who want to be fair.
All the best,
Joe Scarborough
source: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2506
First, ask of the Samaritan his sexual orientation
JOHN YOUNG Opinion page editor
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Were it not counter-productive and counter-intuitive in a nation of many creeds, it would be tempting to say, "All right, already. We hereby declare this a Christian nation."
Why? Because, as adherents point out, if our nation comported itself as Christ would, all social problems would be solved. All charitable needs would be met.
Sure, there would be re-adjustments – like how to ramp down our military machine (“Put up your sword.” Matthew 26:52), or what to do with the greed that makes our economy run (“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon Earth.” Luke 12:15)
But when it came to children hurting, the sick going without care, families sleeping in junked cars, well, in a Christian nation it wouldn't happen.
In a Christian nation, every human need would be announced as with a civil defense siren.
As I said, the whole Christian nation idea is counter-intuitive, so I profess not to have dwelt on the logistics. But Raymond Anderson has.
Anderson, a Texarkana attorney, is devoutly Christian. Recently he formed a corporation that has given away 15,000 copies of the book The Way – The Three Steps of Jesus to people all over.
The other day Anderson was so struck by an action of the Texas Legislature that, pursuant to his faith, he wrote to newspapers around Texas.
"If Christianity means anything at all," he writes, "it means that there should not be one child in Texas who needs foster care for which there would not be an abundance of loving Christian couples."
Then he imagined the plight of one child – an abused 6-year-old in need of foster care.
This isn't much of a stretch. Texas has several thousand real-live ones. But for the sake of parable:
A boy, abused and abandoned, needed a home. A caseworker called all over town.
She called a pastor, who begged off. "He had been selected to do the annual sermon at the Baptist State Convention and was too busy," writes Anderson. The sermon "was projected to be a lulu and he hoped it would be reported in the media."
Another pastor couldn't take the abused child into his home. He was in the heat of the spring revival. He did, however, invite the caseworker to come and be saved.
Several other men of the cloth and high morals said the demands of Christian life were too intense to take in the abused child. The caseworker was running out of options.
Then two pleasant, presentable, law-abiding 30-something men came to the office and inquired about offering their home as foster parents. The interview process made apparent: They were domestic partners.
At this point in the parable, Anderson asks, who in the story had "practiced the second greatest commandment, which is to love your neighbor as yourself?" Was it the too-busy pastors or the two accommodating domestic partners?
That's just hypothetical, you might say. The Texas House was dealing with the real world when it voted to require Child Protective Services to reject compar- able applicants who would offer sanctuary, even if it means abused children go without foster care.
So, here is how today's Texas House might answer the parable's query about how best to serve the child's welfare: "We suggest that he hitch a ride to the next revival."
John Young's column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.
source: http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2005/05/01/20050501wacyoung.html
Sunday, May 01, 2005
" A thriving city is one that celebrates its diversity."
The Presidential Proclamation of a National Day of Prayer
May 1, 2005
In his first Inaugural Address, President George Washington prayed that the Almighty would preserve the freedom of all Americans. On the National Day of Prayer, we celebrate that freedom and America's great tradition of prayer. The National Day of Prayer encourages Americans of every faith to give thanks for God's many blessings and to pray for each other and our Nationx85. On this National Day of Prayer, we pray especially for the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces who are serving around the world to defend the cause of liberty. We are grateful for their courage and sacrifice and ask God to comfort their families while they are away from home. We also pray that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and throughout the Greater Middle East, may live in safety and freedom. During this time, we continue to ask God's blessing for our Nation, granting us strength to meet the challenges ahead and wisdom as we work to build a more peaceful future for all.
- George W. Bush
Thanks to a number of caring Abilenians, there will be at least two public opportunities for us to participate in the National Day of Prayer on Thursday. We can join a gathering on the steps of the City Hall or one in Everman Park, across from the Grace Museum.
Just as President Bush calls on ''Americans of every faith'' to give thanks for God's blessings, nearly every president back to George Washington has called on Americans to pray ''each in his own way'' on a National Day of Prayer.
As staff writer Brian Bethel's story on Page 1A explains, the range of the celebrations stems from the willingness of several groups to ensure that we can pray ''each in our way'' Thursday.
While we are giving thanks, or asking for God's blessings for those in harm's way, let's also give thanks for the Christian Pray Big Country organization, which agreed to move its service to the park; for the Abilene Interfaith Council for asking for a broad-based service on the public grounds of City Hall; and for Mayor Norm Archibald for his leadership in recognizing the importance of embracing all our citizens.
A thriving city is one that celebrates its diversity. Abilene is thriving.
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/op_editorials/article/0,1874,ABIL_7983_3743396,00.html
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AISD hosts Day of Prayer breakfast
The Presidential Proclamation of a National Day of Prayer
United to Pray
National Day of Prayer events hosted by two groups Thursday
By Brian Bethel / Reporter-News
May 1, 2005
The Abilene Interfaith Council will host a National Day of Prayer celebration Thursday on the steps of Abilene's City Hall, while another group that had intended to use the venue for an exclusively Christian service is moving to a downtown park.
Jim Pruitt, organizer of a National Day of Prayer service coordinated by Pray Big Country, a collection of local pastors, said the move to Everman Park on North 1st Street seemed to be the best for everyone.
''The Lord's work gets done in either case,'' he said.
One of the Interfaith Council founders, the Rev. Roz Thomas, said she was pleased with the development but would have preferred one large service.
''I feel this is great news, and am only sorry that the Pray Big Country group could not see its way clear to join its prayers with ours in the same event,'' said Thomas, who is associate rector at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest.
The Pray Big Country service will feature a variety of local ministers, music and celebration, all with a mainline Christian theme. The service will carry the theme of ''God Shed His Grace On Thee,'' in keeping with the Day of Prayer coordinated by Shirley Dobson, wife of evangelist and commentator James Dobson of Focus on the Family.
The Interfaith Council ceremony will feature one person from each of the major faiths represented in the organization.
The council's board is made up of representatives from each of the three main branches of Christianity (Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Anglican) and six other faiths (Judaism, Islam, Baha'2/3 Faith, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Unitarian). The majority of the council's membership comes from those faiths.
The changes in Thursday's schedule comes after two members of the Interfaith Council - Sandy Perry, the group's leader, and Dr. Ron Smith - expressed their concerns to Mayor Norm Archibald after learning that the Day of Prayer ceremony being planned by Pray Big Country was to be exclusively Christian in nature.
''We had a very good discussion about the importance of having any ceremony at City Hall for the National Day of Prayer being open to people of all faiths as is called for in Presidential and Texas proclamations,'' Perry said.
She said the group told Archibald and City Attorney Sharon Hicks that while it was ''not interested in being confrontational, we feel the city is best served in such an event when it encourages participation from all of its citizens - and not limiting it to one faith group.''
Perry said the group wanted any National Day of Prayer event held at City Hall to be open to participation by people of all faiths on an equal footing.
''We did not want a 'separate but equal' event,'' she said.
When the mayor told Perry that Pray Big Country had decided to move its observance to a different location, she then asked him if the AIC might be permitted to coordinate an interfaith event open to all at Abilene's City Hall, Thomas said.
Archibald then granted the group permission to do so.
Thomas said those in the group believe that an event held on the City Hall steps should be by default inclusive in tone and execution.
''We can certainly take pride in our mayor, who has clearly taken the high road in recognizing the importance of each and every citizen of our wonderful city,'' she said.
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_3743535,00.html
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Note from Steve. It's easy for me to see which group is inclusive and respectful of all of Abilene's residents. Kudos to the Abilene Interfaith Council for walking the walk.
Brownwood Drugs: An Equal Opprotunity Nemesis
" today the nemesis of the local drug trade is not an imported product. "
Brownwood Bulletin
Sunday May 1, 2005
Op Ed: Columnist
Greater emphasis needed on reducing drug demand -- Robert Brincefield
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nem·e·sis (ne˘m'i˘-si˘s)
n., pl. -ses (-sïz').
1. A source of harm or ruin
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While I think Bob's Column is on target on many points, I disagree with his quote " today the nemesis of the local drug trade is not an imported product. ". An example of what I am talking about is the recent international drug bust (see below) less than 15 miles from Brownwood (Lake Brownwood State Park). I agree with Bob that education should be a very visible part of the Brownwood solution and one that involves the " entire " community.
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Feds Arrest 20 in Internet Drug Bust
Posted April 20, 2005 5:45PM
" Twenty people in the United States and abroad were arrested on charges they ran Internet pharmacies that illegally shipped narcotics, steroids and amphetamines to teenagers and other buyers around the world, federal authorities announced Wednesday.
The arrests were the result of a yearlong investigation by six federal agencies of online pharmacies that often operate in the shadows of the Internet, with no fixed address and no way to track where they are located, Drug Enforcement Administrator Karen Tandy said.
The drugs were shipped to buyers with little or no effort to verify ages or medical need, allowing teenagers or drug abusers easy access to addictive and dangerous drugs, officials said."
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About Me
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- Name:Steves' Market & Deli
- Location:Brownwood, Texas, United States
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- WELCOME TO STEVE'S BLOG
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