I…I…I’m completely speechless. Seriously. I don’t even know what to say to this…
A national tour featuring decorated veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan won’t be stopping at Forest Lake Area High School today as planned, after school leaders abruptly canceled the visit.
Steve Massey, the school principal, said the decision to cancel was prompted by concerns that the event was becoming political rather than educational and therefore was not suitable for a public school.
He said the school had received several phone calls from parents and others, some of whom indicated that they may stage a protest if the event took place.
"The event was structured to be an academic classroom discussion around military service. We thought we’d provide an opportunity for kids to learn about service in the context of our history classes," Massey said. "As the day progressed, it became clear that this was becoming a political event … which would be inappropriate in a public setting.
"We decided to cancel," Massey said. Organizers of the National Heroes Tour then scrambled to relocate the event to the American Legion building in Forest Lake. The visit, which U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Stillwater, had been scheduled to attend, is sponsored by Vets for Freedom, a national organization run by Pete Hegseth, a 1999 graduate of Forest Lake Area High School who served with the 101st Airborne in Iraq in 2005-06.
"I think it’s extremely unfortunate that a school would bow to the political pressure of outside groups and not bring in a veterans organization," Hegseth said. "Are we saying that patriotism and duty and honor have no place in our public schools?" So far, the tour has visited one school, albeit a private school.
The stop in Forest Lake was supposed to involve about 150 social studies students and was going to be closed to the public but open to the media. But the last-minute venue change left Hegseth wondering how many people would actually show up today.
"I don’t know if we’ll have a crowd," he said. "We changed venues, but we don’t have the ability to publicize it." He said he had talked with school officials ahead of time and assured them that the presenters would not make any political statements.
I’m not a fan of John McCain’s. I think this guy would be bad for the country, and certainly bad for conservatives. He doesn’t want to close the border. He still wants to give the 12+ million illegal immigrants in this country a free ride. He doesn’t like interrogating Al Qaida terrorists. And on and on and on. But would he be better than Hillary Clinton? With Clinton we get socialized medicine, an immediate pull-out from Iraq, probably the closure of Gitmo, and on and on and on. Plus, don’t forget, this is the lady who said "We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." If that aint socialism, I really don’t know what is. It seems to me, seriously though, that McCain, with all his faults, would be the lesser of two evils (granted, not by much though).
Ann Coulter disagrees. She claims if the race is between McCain and Clinton, she would vote for Clinton. Now, I should disclose that I’m not particularly a fan of Coulter’s either. I think she is crass and rude. I’ve never read her books, but she is a far-right wing bomb thrower who does stupid things like defend McCarthyism. Have a look see:
Doug Ross manages to succinctly and concisely capture an entirely foreseeable chain of events. Head on over and check it out, it doesn’t take long - I promise.
Stop the Memorial Blogburst: Why only 38 Memorial Groves?
One prominently advertised feature of the Flight 93 Memorial designed planned for Flight 93’s crash site in Pennsylvania is the “40 Memorial Groves,” one for each of the murdered heroes:
Why then does the actual design only contain 38?
The Memorial Groves are built into the crescent of what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace. The crescent forms part of the symbolic heavens in architect Paul Murdoch’s crescent and star shaped design. Infidels cannot be memorialized in the Islamic heavens, so the 38 Memorial groves have to be a memorial to someone else. Who?
It is a simple geometric fact that a line across the most obtruding tips of the crescent of Memorial Groves points approximately to the White House:
A line across the Memorial Groves has the same slope (129° clockwise from north) as a line between the crash site and area of Washington DC that contains the Pentagon, the White House and the Capitol.
Notice also that the 38 groves can be seen as a set of 19 nested crescents. Take two groves away from the arc of 38 and a line across the tips of the remaining 36 will also point to the White House. Ditto for 34 groves, 32, etcetera, down to 2. One nested crescent for each of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists, each pointing to Washington, the specific target of the Flight 93 and Flight 77 terrorists and the symbolic target of all nineteen 9/11 terrorists.
Architect Paul Murdoch proves that he intends the 38 groves to be seen as a set of 19 nested crescents by surrounding the Tower of Voices with its own set of 19 nested crescents:
The Tower array contains nineteen nested crescents of various lengths, some as short as two trees, the same as with the Memorial Groves. Using arcs as short as two trees long is Murdoch’s trick for hiding the number of nested crescents in the Tower array. It isn’t until one finds the 19 nested crescents in the Memorial Groves, where the shortest crescent is made up of only 2 groves, that one knows to count the pairs of trees as crescents.
The Tower array also contains four single trees, giving special recognition to the four Flight 93 hijackers.
If anyone wants to think that this is coincidence, that is fine. (If not for all the other Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the design, it might even be reasonable.) But even if it is coincidence, the American people still need to know that the planned Flight 93 memorial does in fact contain two sets of 19 nested crescents, and decide for themselves whether it is okay that the memorial contain elements like this that can be interpreted as honoring the 9/11 terrorists.
Fuller explanation of the Murdoch’s 19-nested-crescents theme here.
The Superintendent said you have to show “intent”. There was a supposed “investigation” wherein the investigator did no investigating. We have been contacting Popular Mechanics to verify the claims of Islamic intent in this design; but have instead been lumped in with the conspiracy theorists of the Truther genre.
“Intent” is overt and demonstrated in simple facts. All of these features are plainly evident. It is crystal clear that Murdoch is paying tribute to the terrorists who murdered the Flight 93 passenger and crew in this memorial design. The features are so numerous and redundant it would be in sane to deny that they exist, or that it’s a ‘misunderstanding’. You can’t see a crescent where a crescent doesn’t exist; it’s not possible. It’s not possible to measure the direction to mecca with different tools unless that exists, and so on.
All they’ve been able to do is come up with the ridiculous “there is no direction to Mecca” as a rebuttal. Americans need to be alerted that another terrorist attack is about to happen on the Flight 93 crash site…should this memorial begin construction as planned.
When was the last time you saw all of these things converge BY ACCIDENT into one design? People were shocked and dismayed at the overt crescent design, but the redesign which added a few trees behind the mosque retains all the terrorist memorializing features of the original.
This project must be stopped and a proper and appropriate memorial should be planned for the crash site of Flight 93.
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If you want to join the blogroll/blogburst for the Crescent of Betrayal blogburst, email Cao at caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com, with your blog’s url address. The blogburst will be sent out once a week to the participants, for simultaneous publication on this issue on Wednesdays.
In a move that rings of the American spirit and enforces and validates American’s first amendment rights, the 2nd Circuit US Court of Appeals has made it clear that Americans are not subject to foreign jurisdictions in their speech and writings. Their conclusion of Ehrenfeld v. Mahrouz (06-2228-cv) further solidifies our freedoms, and our sovereignty.
Quick back story here. Rachel Ehrenfeld is an author. She wrote a book titled Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It. In the book, she discusses and details how several wealthy Saudi’s funnel money to Hamas and al Qaida. She writes about Khalid Salim a bin Mahfouz. Mahfouz, of course, it livid about the whole idea. So he does what any good terrorist funder would do, he sues her for libel. Did I mention that Ehrenfeld is American? She lives in New York. Her book was published in New York. So one would reason that this terrorist enabler would sue our intrepid author in American right? WRONG!
Knowing that in America her book is covered (very well, I might add) by the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, and also that in America, it is very difficult to prove libel, he decides to sue her in the courts in Great Britain. For those not in the know, it seems that the British courts are much more strict as far as limiting one’s speech than American courts are. It seems that British libel laws make the defendant prove they are not libelous, instead of the other way around. In other words, in Britain, one is libelous until they can prove otherwise. This is completely antithetical to the American system, where one is innocent until proven guilty. The terrorist loving Mahfouz knew this, so he chose to sue her in Britain because some of her books were sold in Britain.
Of course, Ehrenfeld lost the case in Britain (otherwise we wouldn’t be talking about this). She then appealed to the United States Court of Appeals because as an American, she didn’t feel she should be held accountable to the laws of other countries. After all, what good is having the right to free speech, if anyone can squash it from a foreign country? By caving in to this type of legal terrorism, we lose our national sovereignty, and start allowing foreign countries to dictate our laws and interpret our Constitution.
Their decision was that the right to free speech of Americans trumps libelous laws in foreign countries. Here are some excerpts from their conclusion:
“New York should be the last stop on Sheik Mahfouz’s “libel tour.” A contrary decision will not only erode the fundamental free speech rights that this nation has strived to ensure from its founding but also jeopardizes New York’s status as a leading publishing and media center that has deliberately chosen to offer enhanced protection for free expression.”
“The disputed statements in Dr. Ehrenfeld’s book are core political speech.”
“Although couched in the language of personal jurisdiction, Mahfouz’s denial of jurisdiction is really an affirmative assertion of power — his power to silence his critics through strategic libel tourism and the power of foreign courts to regulate American authors and publishers and enjoin their speech in the United States.”
“…this Court should recognize the ability of Dr. Ehrenfeld and other New York authors and journalists to seek meaningful relief in their home forum from the chilling effect of foreign libel judgments and the continued threat of New York enforcement. The Peter Zenger case, which helped establish the freedom of the press in the United States, was decided in 1735 in a courtroom only a few blocks from here. It would therefore be doubly ironic if this case gave foreign libel plaintiffs a blueprint for evading the free speech protections of this country under the guise of state jurisdictional statutes designed to protect due process and discourage forum-shopping in defamation actions.”
(although, I have to admit, I am kinda glad she was in the jurisdiction of the 2nd circuit, and not the 9th circuit)
It seems a majority of the Iraqi Parliament has signed onto draft legislation demanding a cease of the troop surge, and setting a timetable for withdrawal of US troops.
Does this mean that the Iraqi people don’t want us there? No, not really. As I see it, that Sadr fellow (who recently fled to Iran when the troop surge started) has his little army, and quite a few politicians in the parliament. He sees that the troop surge is working, and knows that, if it continues unabated, his power will be greatly diminished. So this guy pulls the proper strings, and gets his people in the parliament to try and get the US troops out.
We’ll just have to wait to see what happens on this. If it goes through, I don’t see that we have much choice than to leave. We setup the government, and have been saying for several years now that Iraq is a sovereign nation. If they ask us to leave, we’ll have to oblige.
Oh, and contrary to popular rumors, I don’t think Pelosi and Reid are heading to Baghdad to argue in favor of the bill (but I’ll bet they wish they could).
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