Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, August 2005

1. Religion. A federal judge sitting in the 7th Circuit ruled last week that Atheism was indeed a religion. The case was brought by prisoners who wanted to form an atheist study group in their prison. The prison administration turned them down, and having nothing else to do, they sued claiming that they had the same rights as other religious worshipers. Now that we have this opinion in hand, we also have an opinion that we can use to fight the incessant separation of church and state lawsuits brought by the ACLU against all manner of things Christian. Remember that the ACLU has been pushing the courts to cleanse all Christian symbols, practices, icons and behavior from the public square. They have successfully pushed a lot of it out. When you push Christianity out of the public square, you replace it with nothing. In other words, you replace it with Atheism, which is, according to the opinion of this sitting federal judge, also a religion. Christians can now make the very same argument that the anti-Christian bigots using the federal courts to cleanse the public square of Christianity. The atheists are simply using the federal courts to impose their religion – atheism – on everyone else, an action in clear violation of the separation of church and state notion they have been pushing for decades. We now have a wonderful tool. It is time to use it.

2. New London. Captain’s Qu arters and WND Daily reported midweek last that the city of New London and their development authority have decided to push their legal advantage on the homeowners who brought the Kelo case in defense of their property rights. They are going to charge the property owners back rent on all property being seized dating back to 2000 when the legal fight began. If the property owners are renting out their property, the city and development authority are laying clam to all the rent paid, for the property did now belong to the owners (according to New London). At least one property owner will owe over $300,000. Finally, New London is going to compute the just compensation based on property values in 2000, when the entire mess st arted rather than the property values today. It appears that the city is going to economically crush the property owners that had the temerity to fight their thieving ways. They should be careful, for this sort of outrageous thieving actions may very well lead some citizens to the conclusion that they need to take the law into their own hands like the Vigilance Committees did in the mid-19th Century. And who would blame them if they did? For if the politicians of new London, aided and abetted by the SCOTUS can do this sort of thing, what is there to keep any other politician from doing it to you and I? No wonder they want to control guns.

3. Akaka Bill. Limbaugh ratcheted up the rhetoric on the odious Akaka Hawaiian Ap artheid Bill last week – finally spending a while talking about it on the air. The bill contains provisions for determining who will be covered, all backed up by a blood test to determine how much Samoan blood you have. If you have above a certain percentage, you are one of the Chosen. If not, you are p art of the Great Unwashed. There has been little discussion of this legislation up here in Alaska, and the congressional delegation has been very quiet. We believe that they have traded support for the Akaka Bill for support of opening ANWR by the Hawaiian delegation (both democrats). Former US Senators Slade Gorton and Hank Brown wrote an op-ed in the WSJ’s Opinion Journal last Wednesday blasting away at the bill. They said that promises made by Senators Inoue (D, HI) and Akaka (D, HI) were broken in the mid-1990s when the Senate passed a disgusting resolution apologizing for overthrowing the Hawaiian monarchy toward the end of the 19th century. At the time, they were told that the resolution was simply a feel-good, pro-forma grab for headlines. Instead, it shows up as the foundation for the Akaka legislation. We need to remind these guys that they should never vote for anything that is not the right thing to do, for the leftists will use anything in the worst possible manner. If passed, the Akaka Bill will lay the foundations for future racial separation of any group in America. That separation can be used, according to provisions of this legislation to dissolve the nation, as the racial separatists will be allowed to take their land, opt out of the constitution and leave.

4. Gorelick. The bloggers reported more on the actions of Jamie Gorelick building the infamous wall of separation between intelligence agencies and law enforcement. The 9-11 Omission Commission is furiously pointing the finger at the Pentagon for refusing to allow the Able Danger team to brief the FBI prior to the attacks. It was pentagon lawyers who made that call. Jamie Gorelick was the top pentagon lawyer during the first p art of the Clinton administration before she went to replace Web Hubbell at Janet Reno’s Dep artment of (In)Justice. She hired these people – especially the senior ones, trained them and gave them guidance. They were expected to follow her lead throughout the Clinton administration and apparently did their job well – leading to the intelligence and law enforcement failure that caused 9-11. It is not the Pentagon’s problem. It is the lawyer’s problem, along with their leader and Hillary gal-pal, Jamie Gorelick.

5. Public Pool. Speaking about the so-called separation of Church and State, Seattle has handed off nicely scheduled quiet time to Muslims in several public swimming pools. The sop to dhimmitude by the local government opens public pools to Muslim-only swimming, so that their women won’t be embarrassed. Imagine that. A religion that today treats their women with the height of misogyny deigns to protect them from the sight of non-Muslim men and women. And given that this is Seattle, centre of the Pacific Northwest PC infestation, why, oh why is Seattle giving control of public resources to members of the very same religion that would force us all to submit to their law, the Sharia, if they could? Perhaps they have surrendered. Perhaps they have capitulated. Perhaps they haven’t a clue what they are doing at all.

6. RU-486. Michelle Malkin wrote an extended analysis in her blog last week of deaths directly attributable to the aborto-drug RU-486 and wondered where the outrage was. There have been eight deaths directly attributable to the use of the drug in Europe, Canada and the US so far. Most of the deaths are attributable to heavy bleeding and septic shock following the use of the drug in a tubal pregnancy. The FDA is investigating another 17 fatalities connected to the use of the drug. According to a medical analysis the use of the drug causes heavy bleeding as the major side effect. During European trials of the drug, one out of every hundred users bled so heavily that they needed hospitalization and transfusions. Yet nobody outside of the pro-life community reports this news or is concerned with the dangers of using the drug. Contrast this laissez faire treatment with the trial lawyer feeding frenzy now going after Merck for Vioxx side effects. Perhaps it is time for the pro-life community to get a few of the sharks (trial lawyers) to go after Planned Parenthood and NARAL for pushing the use of RU-486, winning a few lawsuits against them for hundreds of millions of dollars and putting them out of business. RU-486 is far, far more dangerous than Vioxx and that danger ought to be litigated in the lottery that the trial lawyers have managed to turn the courts into.

1. Able Danger. The big news of the last week was the Able Danger story. Able Danger was a classified data mining operation performed by military Special Operations members. They identified Mohammed Atta, leader of the 9-11 attack team and three of his cronies a year before the attack. They tried on at least two occasions to pass that information along to the FBI and other law enforcement officials. Their supervisors and Pentagon lawyers refused those requests, citing Atta’s legal presence here in the US. Note that Atta was identified as an Al Qaida operative by the team, at a time when the Pentagon was increasingly concerned with Al Qaida. This is yet another egregious lapse in intelligence flow caused by Jamie Gorelick’s wall of separation between national assets, intelligence and domestic law enforcement. The story gets better, as the Able Danger team briefed staffers from the 9-11 Commission twice on the failure. Unfortunately, the 9-11 Commission already had their minds made up about the cause of the intelligence failure and refused to note the Able Danger failure to disseminate in their final report. The staff, apparently working to ensure that none of the dirty laundry wound up near Commission member Jamie Gorelick, who created the wall of separation, or Richard Ben-Veniste, who was there to ensure that nothing got on the Clinton Administration, never briefed all the Commission members – essentially burying the story. Members of Able Danger, at no small risk to their military careers took the story public to Congressman Curt Weldon (R, PA), who went public with it. Weldon spent the week getting the story out and blasting away at the 9-11 Commission. Commission Chairmen Kean and Hamilton had at least three different stories about what they did with the Able Danger information, first denying it, and eventually saying they knew about it, but were unable to get any verification from the Pentagon so they didn’t use it in their final report. Pretty cute, blaming the Pentagon once again. Over the weekend, the leftist media struck back, mostly going after Weldon in personal attacks led by Time Magazine. Here’s the bottom line on this mess. Atta and his team were in the country for at least a year before the attack. We knew about them. We knew they were Al Qaida. We knew they were dangerous. The infamous wall of separation between intelligence and domestic law enforcement put into place by Jaime Gorelick, one of Hillary Clinton’s choices at the (In)Justice Dept. kept that information from being passed along. And what was the real reason for the wall? If you are a cynic, the reason was to keep investigators into illegal campaign funding by ChiComs during the 1996 election campaign from being properly investigated, charged and prosecuted. The 9-11 Commission, made up of half democrat appointees and half Republican appointees turned into a CYA operation for Washington. Democrat members were especially interested in covering up for Bill Clinton’s failures and inflicting as much damage on the Bush administration during an election campaign as humanly possible – public safety be damned. Today, the talk shows and blogs are carrying most of the water on this, with the (formerly) mainstream media doing its level best to ensure nothing else goes public. The story is an outrage, but not unexpected. It will continue to percolate along and get worse. Stay tuned.

2. Sheehan. Anti-war activists had a field day throughout the week with the public anti-war protest by Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq 16 months ago. Sheehan is a p articularly despicable lady, one who has managed to turn the coffin of her dearly dep arted heroic son – who joined the military and went to war against her wishes – into an anti-war soapbox. There are no moral limits to the actions of the anti-war left. Sheehan has managed to become a media celebrity, mostly because she is railing against President Bush, the war in general, against the Israelis and administration neo-cons in a nicely crafted series of anti-Jewish rants. She has set up a protest location in Crawford, TX near the entrance to Bush’s ranch, and is demanding that he come out and meet with her so she can tell her why (in her words), why he murdered her son. Sheehan and her family already met with Bush last year along with the families of a number of other casualties. She lied about what happened during that meeting, initially praising Bush for his manner, his caring, and his interest in her family. Once she got hooked up with the anti-war leftists and decided that the coffin was really a soapbox, the meeting and Bush’s responses were no longer good enough for her. The anti-war protestors are drawing a nice media crowd during the dog days of summer. Of course, camping out in the middle of Texas during the middle of August is not all that fun, so I encourage them to stay a while. Perhaps they will learn a little bit about rattlesnakes, scorpions, tarantulas and other local fauna. Some of the locals are not taking the occupation very well, with at least one guy firing a couple rounds from a shotgun into the air on his property over the weekend. Sheehan’s husband filed for divorce over the weekend, and the family released a letter in strong opposition to her actions a week ago. The letter was reported on various blogs, but received little mention by the (formerly) mainstream media (no surprise here).

3. Wyden. Ron Wyden (D, OR) passed along a false story about SCOTUS nominee John Roberts last week and got caught. After a meeting with Roberts, Wyden leaked to the NYT a story that Roberts was displeased with congressional action in the Schiavo case. Wyden was referring to the congressional resolution that encouraged the federal courts to review the Schiavo case. The NYT attributed a quote to Roberts that was in fact supplied by Wyden. They never contacted Roberts to confirm or deny the story. In response to Wyden’s question, Roberts said he didn’t know the case, so he was unable to comment on it. The WH was immediately on the story, passing along Roberts’ real response to all available news outlets, demonstrating that Wyden was lying through his teeth about Roberts and that the NYT was cheerfully passing the lie along. Limbaugh. Weds.

4. NARAL. The National Abortion Rights Action League ran a despicable anti-Roberts ad over a week ago. This ad accuses Roberts of defending abortion clinic bombers and supporting what they do because he is pro-life. What really happened was the abortion industry tried to use RICO laws to eliminate all pro-life protests in front of their clinics. Roberts, while a lawyer in the WH, wrote that this law was an inappropriate application of RICO and an infringement of freedom of speech. He went on to write that those that use violence to further their own political beliefs be prosecuted. Of course, the NARAL ad didn’t mention this “minor” distinction. The blogs and talk radio immediately went after NARAL and the ad for simply lying about Roberts in the most inflammatory manner possible. CNN initially carried the ad, but dropped it a few days into its run. Public pressure – for the first time in a very long time – forced NARAL to pull the ad, although Limbaugh managed to keep a copy running on his web site for a week afterwards. Limbaugh also went directly into his parody / humiliation of leftist mode and st arted running a twofer – running the NARAL ad and immediately following it with a specially crafted parody that was only slightly worse than what NARAL was saying. The parody was superbly funny because of its close proximity to the rhetoric used by NARAL. NARAL eventually pulled the ad, blaming it on the evil right wing media. Their executive behind the ad resigned from NARAL last Friday citing personal reasons. Perhaps democrat polling told them that the trick was not going to work any more.

5. Collins. Finally, shuttle Commander Eileen Collins had her Yuri Gagarin moment last week, reporting that her own personal observations of the e arth discovered increasing environmental damage and loss of forest land wordwide. She was looking at muddy rivers in Africa an decided that this was not a Good Thing, for Man caused the mud to wash downstream. Perhaps she never heard that the Mississippi River has been referred to as the Big Muddy for many a years. Remember that one of things that Gagarin said while in orbit in 1961 was that he looked out and looked for God, but could not see Him. Sounds like Collins may have similar powers of observation.

1. Bears. We here in Alaska are in the middle of fishing season. The streams are pretty full of fish, which in turn draw a large number of locals and visitors. The fish also draw the bears to the same location as the people chasing the fish – leading to trouble. Further exacerbating the problem is the gross mismanagement by state and federal wildlife managers here in the Anchorage Bowl and at the confluence of the Russian and Kenai Rivers two hours south of Anchorage. These people have managed the bears by growing their numbers unchecked over the years while training them to raid stringers full of fish, chase people and raid backpacks and other fishing gear – all during the middle of the day. The confluence is one of the most popular fishing holes in the state – with a large number of people chasing red salmon from June through August. Some of those are locals who understand bears, some are locals who don’t, and a bunch of visitors from out of state who are completely clueless about the danger posed by bears also fish at the same locale during the summer. Unfortunately, the confluence also sits in the middle of a federal wildlife refuge, and the feds emphatically don’t allow hunting. Bears sit at the top of their food chain, so there is nothing to cull the numbers other than interactions with humans – which is happening with increasing frequency. A guy got mauled two years ago while on his way to the stream. The number of bears raiding strings of fish has grown sufficiently large that locals are now being warned against taking children to the confluence. There was a handicapped fishing area on the confluence, but I can’t think of anything more awful than trying to move a wheelchair along a rocky, muddy river bank while trying to get out of the way of a brown or black bear out for a stroll. The big item this year was the shooting of a sow with three cubs. The sow was pretty well behaved, but must have scared someone, who shot her. The cubs, all two years old and (mostly) capable of taking care of themselves, went on a rampage for a couple weeks, prompting the wildlife refuge managers to close the fishery at night. Note that their reaction is always to control the actions of the humans rather than do something about the bears. Here in Anchorage we have a smaller, but growing problem with bears in two places. The first is along a nice trout stream in the north p art of Bicentennial Park here in Anchorage. An Anchorage Daily News article on this fishery a week ago went on for a page and a half about the large number of bears playing along the stream (only they weren’t playing – they were taking king salmon out of the stream). Eight bears beside a wilderness stream is no big deal. But this p articular stream sits about a qu arter mile from an established housing development – complete with homes, garbage, bird feeders and an elementary school in west Anchorage – and bears have been known to travel a little ways in search of things to eat. The problem in both places is that anti-hunting wildlife managers – feds on the Russian and state guys here in Anchorage have become confused on their mission in life. They think their jobs are to protect and grow the bears rather than keep the general public safe. If they don’t do their jobs, I expect some of the locals to do it for them, which means turning the offending animals into nice, shiny rugs.

2. Judges. Alaska judges had themselves quite a week last week. The first was a state judge in Ketchikan who vacated a jury verdict against Greenpeace for failure to have a toxic waste / spill plan onboard when their last boat came to Southeast Alaska to protest logging in the Tongass. When the protestors arrived last year, the state environmental guys met them with a request for proper documentation to operate in Alaskan waters. Of course, Greenpeace, who never lives under the same rules and regs they demand of everyone else, didn’t have the documentation. They were charged, tried and convicted. The trial judge, a long-time resident of Ketchikan who was appointed to the state bench by our last democrat governor (Phony) Tony Knowles, vacated the jury conviction using the excuse that there was insufficient evidence for the conviction. This is the first time a state judge has taken such an action and it did not go unnoticed that he could have refused to let the case go to trial for the same reason. The state will appeal the ruling. The second story is about how state judges cover for one another. Our judges are appointed by the governor, confirmed by the legislature, and are up for a retention election every ten years afterwards. Two sitting judges didn’t get their election paperwork in on time and were removed from the ballot by the state. They went to court (obviously), whined a bit, and were gifted with a 50-page ruling from one of their cronies giving all the reasons why they should be allowed on the ballot. Don’t know where this one is going yet, but it sure does smack of cronyism.

3. Adoption. The NYT, ever the positive example of journalistic integrity and ethics took a suggestion from a leftist blogger and st arted digging into the details of John Robert adoptions. The left it trying to unseal sealed adoption records, probably trying to find the birth mother, and use his children as a wedge against the nomination and confirmation. Just when you thought the left couldn’t go any lower, they dig the hole down another couple yards and accelerate.

4. Pro Bono. The LA Times, another leftist rag published an article last week about some pro bono work that John Roberts did while working for a law firm in DC. This work was done in preparation for a case that overturned a Colorado ballot initiative banning any special rights for homosexuals. Apparently Roberts, who had argued many cases in front of the SCOTUS, was sought out within the firm to help people prepare for making their case before the court. The Colorado case was simply one of many he p articipated in. Unfortunately the SCOTUS opinion was awful, giving the court the right to overturn any state ballot initiative any time they feel like it. The opinion was also one of the foundation pieces of the court’s Lawrence v Texas opinion that overturned sodomy laws nationwide and bought us yet another step closer to court-ordered gay marriage. The article caused a stir among conservatives. Fred Thompson, who is handling the nomination spoke on Limbaugh Monday and said that Roberts was doing what lawyers do in law firms. As the week went on, it turned out that the LA Times got their information from a leftist lawyer who worked for the same firm, and that the story was written to split conservatives from both the president and Roberts using gay rights as a wedge. There will be more of this tripe over the course of the next few months. Expect it to get worse. And never believe anything you read in the (formerly) mainstream media without verifying it and/or putting it properly into context. They are pulling out all the stops for this nomination, although it is just a warmup for the next 1-3 nominations that Bush may get to do between now and 2008.

5. NCAA. Last weekend, the NCAA decided to ban all college nicknames and mascots that had anything to do with anything Indian (Native American for you Multiculturalism fans). Florida State has been ordered to chuck their Seminole mascot and nickname. Illinois can no longer use Illini. There are many, many others. The sports world is scratching their collective heads and trying to figure out how to tell the NCAA to go to Hell. Florida State, which maintains a great connection with the Seminole Nation in Florida, is considering a lawsuit against the NCAA. Expect other Universities to join the lawsuit, although with the rampant leftist PC among university faculty nationwide, it is possible that nobody may join. We will see. In one fell swoop, the NCAA has rendered themselves an odious laughingstock to sportsfans nationwide. This will be a lot of fun to sort out over the next several months.

1. Cross. San Diego voted on an initiative to transfer the land on and around a county war memorial to the federal government Tuesday. The transfer was a response to an ACLU lawsuit filed against the city and county of San Diego to remove a cross that has occupied the top of Mount Soledad in some form for nearly 90 years. The mountain top was turned into a war memorial over the course of decades. An aggrieved atheist, an anti-Christian bigot, and the courts that now celebrate, implement and enforce that sort of bigotry managed to get the local politicians to vote to remove the cross. Members of the local congressional delegation got involved, and inserted a provision that would have transferred the cross and the land surrounding it to the federal government so they could save the cross and the memorial to the fallen. This wasn’t good enough for the local courts, the atheist, the ACLU and members of the local government, so the citizens managed to force a referendum on the transfer. Last Tuesday, the citizens of San Diego voted over 75% in favor of making the transfer, which I would observe is a pretty large mandate. Now that the citizens have told the courts, the local politicians, the ACLU and the aggrieved atheist what they think and where to go, the cross will remain a while – at least until the next democrat administration conducts another round of anti-Christian ethnic cleansing. Michelle Malkin’s Blog.

2. Shuttle. Sometimes when you take a close look at something you never have taken a really, really close look at, you see some st artling things. Unfortunately, you also see that some things that never change. Film taken during ascent of the shuttle last week showed another large chunk of external tank thermal protection system (TPS) foam leaving the tank during flight thorough the atmosphere. It appears that the management ignored a portion of the tank which had never been thought to peel off chunks of TPS in their deliberations. This flight, and perhaps many others, managed to lose a foam chunk from that portion during launch. Up until Columbia, things falling off the launch vehicle during launch were expected. If you don’t believe it, look at the old Saturn V launches for all the ice falling off the first stage during liftoff. On the plus side, changes in TPS application were successful in that apparently there were far fewer holes on the tiles underneath the orbiter than in any flight since the CFC ban was adopted for flight hardware in 1996. They’ve cleaned up a lot. They have more to do – and less than 15 flights left to do whatever they need to do. It is clear that NASA still has a management problem at the upper and mid levels, for they didn’t figure out everything from a clean sheet of paper. They didn’t strip down a tank and reapply the TPS from scratch. The best thing done by the new NASA Administrator was to immediately ground the fleet, which is a wonderful, operational thing to do. Military aircraft are regularly grounded for safety and operational reasons. They are fixed, cleared for flight, and flown again. Mr. Griffin understands this precisely – much to his credit. The media hasn’t a clue.

3. Roberts. The runup to the confirmation hearings for John Roberts to the Supreme Court percolated along nicely last week, with the WH rolling over to outrageous demands by congressional democrats to provide truckloads of documents from his days as a lawyer in the WH. Many were located at the Reagan Library, as Roberts was a lawyer in that administration as a mid-20 year old newbie. Conservative commentators immediately blasted the WH release as a dangerous violation of the separation between the Executive and Congress. These guys are short-sighted, for if the Bush administration sets the precedent with congressional democrats over what to provide dumptruck loads of paper for their nominees, what will the next democrat administration be able to withhold? Remember that precedent cuts both ways, and the very people that are loudly and self-righteously demanding mountains of documents regardless of any notion of lawyer-client privilege, are creating a standard can be applied to the next leftist appointee to the federal bench. And I believe they have a heck of a lot more to hide than we do. Bush is a poker player and he thinks strategically. He thinks in terms of destroying the other side. He is willing to take a short-term tactical loss in return for a long-term strategic win. Leftists thrive in the dark, under rocks, hiding behind women, children and the handicapped. They don’t do so well when their writings and dealings see the light of day. Bush’s actions to release 70,000+ pages of Roberts’ papers set the precedent for future nominations. The other notion that comes out of the last week is the fight over what questions to answer during the confirmation hearings. As usual, the sides are jockeying over what to answer and what not to answer or discuss. Count me as one who believes that everything should be on the table. I think that a nominee ought to be quite comfortable saying that he or she believes the constitution means what it says and if there are any hidden penumbras or emanations, well then we would have heard of them in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist writings. The dems will hate it. The majority of the nation, in fear for their homes, private property, and culture after the disaster of the last SCOTUS session, will revel in it. If such a discussion is too hot for the mealy-mouthed, pontificating democrats, well then, they will just have to vote against the nominee. Our side always wins when the discussion is out in the open, up front, positive, and honest. The other side won’t be any of those, which is a huge advantage in the discussion. The truth always wins.

4. Air America. Michelle Malkin has been leading an expose of fraud by Air America in New York. The head of Air America, the liberal talk show radio network, sat on the board of a Boys & Girls Club in NYC. His corporation was failing due to lack of funding so he embezzled around $800,000 from the club. He called it a loan and then st arted mealy-mouthing about whether or not they had to pay the loan back. The club itself served poor, disadvantaged, mostly minority kids and now they are out nearly a million dollars. The (formerly) mainstream media has been completely silent about the scandal. The blogs and talk shows have been carrying the water on the story. Local authorities in NYC have an investigator on the fraud. We will see who, if anyone goes to jail on this one.

5. London. Al Qaida tried to strike again July 21 in London with another four bombs placed on a bus and the subway. Fortunately, the bombers – all young Muslim men – botched the construction and only the detonators functioned. All were pictured on cameras at various points in the city. Nobody was killed or injured – though it is not because the bad Guys didn’t try real hard to do so. They were systematically hunted down and captured, with one being nabbed at his uncle’s home in Rome. The Brits also captured all paraphernalia, computer systems, and communications devices for the cell. As of last weekend, they were in the process of rolling up a third cell in London. If successful, they will have captured the people, the gear, and all communications between the local cell and Al Qaida. This will tell us a lot about how Al Qaida, now thought to be reconstituted and operating out of Iran, is set up and operating. The other thing that the London bombings have done is to st art putting a wooden stake into the he art of multiculturalism in the Western world. There ARE cultures that do not deserve respect or understanding. There are cultures – totalitarian Islam, Wahabism, or Islamists, for instance – that are too barbarian to tolerate in our midst. This culture will simply not leave us alone; will not live out their own lives by themselves. They are infiltrating the West, intending to convert us all to Islam, set up the torture cambers and institute the Sharia – which is pre-Dark Age barbarity. Perhaps the only good thing out of this war is the death knell to multiculturalism and the stark demonstration that some cultures are indeed far better than others.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
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by Alex Gimarc Mon., Aug 22, 2005