 |
| Eddie Colosimo faces $300 in fines for every day he chooses to fly flags
honoring branches of the military in front of his restaurant. (MyFoxOrlando.com) A wounded Marine veteran who owns a bar and grill in a city outside Tallahassee is fighting a city ordinance that calls for him to remove military flags from in front of his establishment, or face a $300-a-day fine. MyFoxOrlando.com reports that Eddie Colosimo, who owns the Holy Hill's Bikers for First Amendments Rights, a non-profit that helps support military veterans, was informed that the flags violate new city codes that were passed in March. "You're going to tell me that I can't honor them… show respect for them?" Colosimo told the station. "I'm sorry; bring your handcuffs. I'll go to jail. I don’t care." The law requires businesses to apply for a permit to display temporary signs or banners on their property, excluding the American flag, state flags or POW flags. He has flags for the Navy, Air Force and Marines. Colosimo, a wounded Marine Corps vet with family currently in the military, usually flew the flags on the weekends, but after he received the notice, he's been flying them daily. He is now facing a $300 fine from City of Holly Hill for every day he chooses to fly the flags. Colosimo said comparing his armed services flags to beer signs "doesn’t fly." Officials announced they will hold a special hearing to discuss Colosimo’s case. Colosimo's granddaughter, grandson and son-in-law all currently serve in different branches of the military. Origin: MyFoxOrlando.com. |
Saturday, April 13, 2013
'I'll GO TO JAIL': Veteran Florida Bar Owner Faces Fine for Military Flags
April 13, 2013
|
| Eddie Colosimo faces $300 in fines for every day he chooses to fly flags
honoring branches of the military in front of his restaurant. (MyFoxOrlando.com) |
Genuine conversations on race
April 13, 2013
Jonah Goldberg
New York Post
Are Brad Paisley and Rand Paul the bravest men in America?
Er, no. At least not by my lights. But the country singer and the senator are contenders for that title according to Attorney General Eric Holder, who in 2009 famously declared that America is a “nation of cowards” because it refuses to talk about race “enough.”
Holder was hardly the first, nor will he be the last, liberal to call for a national conversation on race. It’s one of the mossiest locutions in modern America.
Though often ridiculous and hackneyed, this isn’t necessarily a sinister or mercenary thing. I doubt there are any activists out there who wouldn’t dearly love to have their issue — adoption, literacy, animal cruelty, mopery, whatever — be turned into a “national conversation,” never mind turned into a required topic in curricula from K through PhD.
Less defensible is when calls for a national conversation amount to a trap. It’s a predictable pattern. Some poor dupe thinks people are serious about all this frank-dialogue talk. He sticks his head up to say something frank and quickly finds it separated from his shoulders.
Which brings us first to Paisley. He’s released a song titled “Accidental Racist,” and it has attracted an enormous amount of scorn. It’s not a great song from what I can tell. Though is it really the “worst song ever,” as several critics have said? It seems to me that “Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)” is catchier but substantively less redeeming.
Which is to say that Paisley — with an accompaniment from legendary rapper LL Cool J — is striving for something important. The song is a ballad about a white Southerner trying to reconcile his Southern pride and his rejection of racism.
It begins with a scene where a black barista at Starbucks takes offense at the Confederate flag on the white narrator’s shirt. “To the man that waited on me at the Starbucks down on Main, I hope you understand/When I put on that T-shirt, the only thing I meant to say is I’m a Skynyrd fan.”
Paisley defends the song as an effort to — you guessed it — start a conversation. Personally, I think art that has to be defended on conversation-starting grounds probably isn’t art. Conversely, I’m inclined to think that any song with Paisley’s message would be denounced and ridiculed.
Right or wrong, letting the South off the hook for its racial sins is not something that interests many of Paisley’s critics. The fact that Paisley (and LL Cool J) made the critics’ job so much easier doesn’t change that.
Something similar can be said about the reception to Rand Paul’s appearance at Howard University this week. Paul did exactly the right thing by making his case to a politically unsympathetic audience of minorities.
Much of the criticism of Paul centered on speculation about his motives. He’s just trying to soften his image! He’s using the audience as a prop! To which the only intellectually honest rejoinder is: Maybe he is! Isn’t that what politicians do?
Both Paul and Paisley are doing exactly what liberal politicians, civil-rights activists and editorial boards have been demanding for decades. Paisley contributed his best effort for a “frank dialogue.” Paul reached out to minorities, engaged in the conversation and didn’t take blacks for granted.
No one should be shocked that neither effort settled anything. That’s how conversations are supposed to work, but not, apparently, the kinds of conversations the conversation-starters have in mind.
Jonah Goldberg’s “The Tyranny of Clichés” is out in paperback April 30.
Jonah Goldberg
New York Post
Are Brad Paisley and Rand Paul the bravest men in America?
Er, no. At least not by my lights. But the country singer and the senator are contenders for that title according to Attorney General Eric Holder, who in 2009 famously declared that America is a “nation of cowards” because it refuses to talk about race “enough.”
Holder was hardly the first, nor will he be the last, liberal to call for a national conversation on race. It’s one of the mossiest locutions in modern America.
Though often ridiculous and hackneyed, this isn’t necessarily a sinister or mercenary thing. I doubt there are any activists out there who wouldn’t dearly love to have their issue — adoption, literacy, animal cruelty, mopery, whatever — be turned into a “national conversation,” never mind turned into a required topic in curricula from K through PhD.
Less defensible is when calls for a national conversation amount to a trap. It’s a predictable pattern. Some poor dupe thinks people are serious about all this frank-dialogue talk. He sticks his head up to say something frank and quickly finds it separated from his shoulders.
Which brings us first to Paisley. He’s released a song titled “Accidental Racist,” and it has attracted an enormous amount of scorn. It’s not a great song from what I can tell. Though is it really the “worst song ever,” as several critics have said? It seems to me that “Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)” is catchier but substantively less redeeming.
Which is to say that Paisley — with an accompaniment from legendary rapper LL Cool J — is striving for something important. The song is a ballad about a white Southerner trying to reconcile his Southern pride and his rejection of racism.
It begins with a scene where a black barista at Starbucks takes offense at the Confederate flag on the white narrator’s shirt. “To the man that waited on me at the Starbucks down on Main, I hope you understand/When I put on that T-shirt, the only thing I meant to say is I’m a Skynyrd fan.”
Paisley defends the song as an effort to — you guessed it — start a conversation. Personally, I think art that has to be defended on conversation-starting grounds probably isn’t art. Conversely, I’m inclined to think that any song with Paisley’s message would be denounced and ridiculed.
Right or wrong, letting the South off the hook for its racial sins is not something that interests many of Paisley’s critics. The fact that Paisley (and LL Cool J) made the critics’ job so much easier doesn’t change that.
Something similar can be said about the reception to Rand Paul’s appearance at Howard University this week. Paul did exactly the right thing by making his case to a politically unsympathetic audience of minorities.
Much of the criticism of Paul centered on speculation about his motives. He’s just trying to soften his image! He’s using the audience as a prop! To which the only intellectually honest rejoinder is: Maybe he is! Isn’t that what politicians do?
Both Paul and Paisley are doing exactly what liberal politicians, civil-rights activists and editorial boards have been demanding for decades. Paisley contributed his best effort for a “frank dialogue.” Paul reached out to minorities, engaged in the conversation and didn’t take blacks for granted.
No one should be shocked that neither effort settled anything. That’s how conversations are supposed to work, but not, apparently, the kinds of conversations the conversation-starters have in mind.
Jonah Goldberg’s “The Tyranny of Clichés” is out in paperback April 30.
New York town removes flag as ‘offensive’ Tea Party symbol
April 13, 2013
Neo-New York - A veterans organization in a New York town is fighting for its right to fly a patriotic flag after the city council refused to let the group display the flag, calling it a symbol of the Tea Party with right-wing connotations.
The United Veterans Memorial & Patriotic Association replaced a tattered American flag at the New Rochelle Armory, flying the Gadsden flag underneath it. The bright yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag has been used by the Navy and Marine Corps since 1775.
When a city council member complained to the city manager that he found the flag offensive, the city manager initially decided to let the flag fly anyway. But the city council overruled him, and the flag was taken down. On Wednesday, the council voted 5 to 2 to keep the veterans from putting the flag back up.
The council objected to the flag because they said Peter Parente, the president of the veterans group, is a member of the Tea Party and the group wants to use the flag to make a political point.
But Parente said at the council meeting no one in his organization is a Tea Party member.
“I’m a proud Republican,” he told the council.
Once council member compared the flag to the rainbow flag used to symbolize gay pride, according to local news website Talk of the Sound. Another has compared it variously to the Nazi flag, a Mickey Mouse flag and graffiti.
The veterans group has retained the Thomas More Law Center to regain the right to fly the flag. They have not yet filed a lawsuit.
“Using the City Council’s reasoning, they would remove the Stars and Stripes from flagpoles because both Democrat and Republican Parties, as well as most political candidates, use the Stars and Stripes in their campaign messaging,” said Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center.
Source: Washington Examiner
The United Veterans Memorial & Patriotic Association replaced a tattered American flag at the New Rochelle Armory, flying the Gadsden flag underneath it. The bright yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag has been used by the Navy and Marine Corps since 1775.
When a city council member complained to the city manager that he found the flag offensive, the city manager initially decided to let the flag fly anyway. But the city council overruled him, and the flag was taken down. On Wednesday, the council voted 5 to 2 to keep the veterans from putting the flag back up.
The council objected to the flag because they said Peter Parente, the president of the veterans group, is a member of the Tea Party and the group wants to use the flag to make a political point.
But Parente said at the council meeting no one in his organization is a Tea Party member.
“I’m a proud Republican,” he told the council.
Once council member compared the flag to the rainbow flag used to symbolize gay pride, according to local news website Talk of the Sound. Another has compared it variously to the Nazi flag, a Mickey Mouse flag and graffiti.
The veterans group has retained the Thomas More Law Center to regain the right to fly the flag. They have not yet filed a lawsuit.
“Using the City Council’s reasoning, they would remove the Stars and Stripes from flagpoles because both Democrat and Republican Parties, as well as most political candidates, use the Stars and Stripes in their campaign messaging,” said Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center.
Source: Washington Examiner
Conservative Consistancy Finally Has A Home: Santorum ignores shift
April 13, 2013
Several 2016 presidential campaigns are already up and running — some more quietly than others — and Republicans hoping to be their party’s nominee are preparing for a primary that could potentially bear little resemblance to those of 2012 and 2008. As the party grapples with a shifting electorate, it is divided over differences on gay marriage, immigration reform, national security policy and even guns — gaps that could only widen by 2015, when campaigns will be in full swing.
Potential candidates are busy searching for safe corners on these contentious issues and are either acknowledging the profound shifts, even when they haven’t changed their minds, or saying little until they have to — all of them, so far, except former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).
Keep Reading>>
Potential candidates are busy searching for safe corners on these contentious issues and are either acknowledging the profound shifts, even when they haven’t changed their minds, or saying little until they have to — all of them, so far, except former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).
Keep Reading>>
If President Barack Obama had a son, would he look like any of the babies Kermit Gosnell beheaded?
April 13, 2013
If you don’t know who Kermit Gosnell is, that’s because you read the New York Times and Politico.com, and you watch network news.
Gosnell is a Philadelphia abortionist who’s currently on trial for murder. Multiple counts. The media hasn’t had much interest in him — including, yes, the Daily Caller — and more and more people are starting to wonder why...
FULL STORY>>
If you don’t know who Kermit Gosnell is, that’s because you read the New York Times and Politico.com, and you watch network news.
Gosnell is a Philadelphia abortionist who’s currently on trial for murder. Multiple counts. The media hasn’t had much interest in him — including, yes, the Daily Caller — and more and more people are starting to wonder why...
FULL STORY>>
Two faces of NY’s sick politics: Anthony & Malcolm
April 13, 2013
Sunday’s New York Times magazine features an interview with disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner, which Weiner granted in a bid to gauge if the public is ready to accept him back in public life.
The Weiner piece comes in the wake of the arrest of state Sen. Malcolm Smith for trying to buy his way onto the Republican mayoral primary ballot. His indictment left many asking, “Why is New York so corrupt?” The answer may lie in the careers of people like Weiner and Smith.
Both the ex-congressman from Queens and the state senator are part of an expansive and expensive political culture which affords them a lifelong job as a New York politico, with virtually no experience doing anything else.
It’s no wonder that many elected officials seem willing to do just about anything, like Smith, to preserve and advance their careers — while others, like Weiner, grow arrogant, egotistical and out of touch with everyday norms after spending years in the New York political bubble.
It’s not like that everywhere else, believe it or not...
SEE WHY>>
Sunday’s New York Times magazine features an interview with disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner, which Weiner granted in a bid to gauge if the public is ready to accept him back in public life.
The Weiner piece comes in the wake of the arrest of state Sen. Malcolm Smith for trying to buy his way onto the Republican mayoral primary ballot. His indictment left many asking, “Why is New York so corrupt?” The answer may lie in the careers of people like Weiner and Smith.
Both the ex-congressman from Queens and the state senator are part of an expansive and expensive political culture which affords them a lifelong job as a New York politico, with virtually no experience doing anything else.
It’s no wonder that many elected officials seem willing to do just about anything, like Smith, to preserve and advance their careers — while others, like Weiner, grow arrogant, egotistical and out of touch with everyday norms after spending years in the New York political bubble.
It’s not like that everywhere else, believe it or not...
SEE WHY>>
Package sent to Arpaio could have injured, killed
April 13, 2013
PHOENIX (AP) -- Arizona authorities say a package addressed to Sheriff Joe Arpaio discovered in a northern Arizona mailbox would have exploded if opened, leading to serious injuries or death...
FULL STORY>>
FULL STORY>>
Illegal Alien Propaganda: A Critical Lesson in Terminology and Tactics
April 13, 2013
As we once again face the specter of illegal alien amnesty, and the permanent Democratic majority it will guarantee, it is critical to understand how the Left plays. They are unethical to the core, but we are so frequently deluded by their tactical use of language and emotion, that we are unequipped to deal with them effectively. The result: they win. This cannot happen again, unless we are all willing to start calling Obama “President for Life,” and Democrats, the “Commissars.”
Introduction
Changes in public perception happen gradually. This is a natural human survival strategy that mistrusts the unfamiliar. A campaign of public education has become necessary to help convince a wary public to accept new ideas or policies that might otherwise take too much time. But there is a difference between education and propaganda... Continue reading
As we once again face the specter of illegal alien amnesty, and the permanent Democratic majority it will guarantee, it is critical to understand how the Left plays. They are unethical to the core, but we are so frequently deluded by their tactical use of language and emotion, that we are unequipped to deal with them effectively. The result: they win. This cannot happen again, unless we are all willing to start calling Obama “President for Life,” and Democrats, the “Commissars.”
Introduction
Changes in public perception happen gradually. This is a natural human survival strategy that mistrusts the unfamiliar. A campaign of public education has become necessary to help convince a wary public to accept new ideas or policies that might otherwise take too much time. But there is a difference between education and propaganda... Continue reading
From Dehumanizing Word Games to Gosnell
April 13, 2013
Abortion is not to be spoken of, only done.
In Philadelphia, at a human abattoir on Lancaster Avenue, is where it ends, not where it starts. It starts with the perversion of language. It starts when the icons of a dissipated culture reduce a baby to a “fetus.” From there, Yeats’s blood-dimmed tide rolls rapidly in. Before long, a baby is not a person but a punishment, as President Barack Obama framed the matter in his familiar off-the-cuff iciness.
Of course, to describe newborn children in their boundless possibilities and wonder would be to acknowledge, foremost, their humanity. That is why, instead, abortion enthusiasts must grope for words when circumstances force them to speak publicly about their gruesome business.
“That fetus, or child — however way you want to describe it,” Mr. Obama once stammered. This was back when, as a state senator, he was unnerved by the natural resistance of babies to the unnatural insistence of their mothers — of the culture — that they just disappear. If you’ve ever watched a hit man testify, you’ve heard the same stammer: the faint glimmer of a long-forgotten but stubbornly indelible line between right and wrong.
It is the line that makes killing much easier to do than to talk about. It is the line that now impels a self-imposed media embargo against news about the shocking trial of Kermit Gosnell.
Gosnell is a 72-year-old abortionist. The formal charges against him — the murders of a woman and seven babies — are but drops in a sea of carnage. Mounting evidence reveals him to be a mass murderer of epic scale and Mengele methods. It also spotlights the evil — the apparently unspeakable evil — of legalized abortion in all its coarsening gore. Plainly, the vaunted journalists of our debased mainstream have determined that there must be no meaningful coverage. No time in the 24/7 cycle to notice the inexorable path from dehumanizing the vulnerable through word games to mass-murdering them with casual sadism.
Better to shove the evidence into a dark closet. That’s what they did in Chicago. There, despite the best efforts of “physicians” (they of the “do no harm” oath), many “however way you want to describe its” were “not just coming out limp and dead,” as Obama haltingly put it. The abortionists’ answer was to stick the helpless survivors in a utility closet where they could die, out of sight and out of mind. Obama, in the pitiless logic of legalized abortion, labored to preserve this oft-practiced but never discussed form of infanticide against the Illinois legislature’s proposed “Born Alive” ban. (See senate transcript, April 4, 2002, beginning at page 29.)
A decade later in Philadelphia, “it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.” So said Stephen Massof, one of Kermit Gosnell’s fellow butchers, as he described for the jury the chamber of horrors that was the “Women’s Medical Society” on Lancaster Avenue. There, scores of babies — perhaps hundreds of them — were willfully mutilated after being born alive.
Standard fare was the “snip.”
“Snip” is a terse, antiseptic word. Like “choice,” it is tailored to those rare, discomfiting occasions when the intentional killing of a “however way you want to describe it” must be spoken of rather than silently done. It is an effort, as much mentally as verbally, to evade the monstrousness we abide in the United States, where nearly 60 million children — a population roughly equal to that of France or the United Kingdom — have been aborted since the Supreme Court’s 1973 fatwa in Roe v. Wade.
In a “snip,” the abortionist, sharp scissors in hand, grasps the squirming and sometimes squealing baby he has just delivered. He stabs the child in the back and then, snapping the blades, severs the spinal cord from the brain. Massof described the snip as “literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.”
He was testifying in exchange for a plea bargain that discounts his participation in numerous such “procedures” to a mere two instances of third-degree murder. After all, most of what he did at the “Women’s Medical Society” was perfectly legal.
The euphemistic “snip” calls to mind the Supreme Court’s opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart, another case about “choice.” Like Gosnell, LeRoy Carhart was an abortion “physician.” In the high court, he joined his progressive friends at Planned Parenthood and the City of San Francisco to defend the “choice” known as “partial birth” abortion — a name soothingly rebranded to “late term” abortion once it became clear that “partial birth” conveyed too much information.
In an uncharacteristically de trop outburst, the five justices in the narrow Carhart majority described varying abortion procedures with startling clinical precision. Most common is the first-trimester “suction curettage,” in which the “physician” vacuums the unwanted “embryonic tissue” from the womb. By the time the second trimester is reached, this “tissue” has matured into the unmistakable shape of a child. Thus the “dilation and evacuation” procedure is often called for.
Employed millions of times in this most civilized country over the last half century, “D&E,” the court explained, involves the “physician’s” use of forceps “to tear apart” the “fetus” by “ripping” it from the cervix and then “evacuating the fetus piece by piece . . . until it has been completely removed” from the mother. Often, the justices observed, the D&E “physician” finds it more congenial to “kill the fetus a day or two before performing the surgical evacuation,” since “medical” experience has shown that, “once dead . . . the fetus’ body will soften,” becoming “easier” to dice and remove. Oh, another helpful tip: “Rotating the fetus as it is being pulled decreases the odds of dismemberment.”
By the time Carhart was decided, Roe v. Wade had been on the books for over a generation — the generation, to be more specific, that is now ruling the roost. It goes without saying — for we wouldn’t want to say it — that, in a nation that has absorbed this generation’s preening “values,” D&E already enjoyed the stamp of judicial approval. The only question before the Carhart Court was whether “partial birth” abortion — “intact D&E” — was beyond the pale.
This “medical procedure” is triggered by an advanced stage of maturation, in which the child’s well-developed head tends to “lodge in the cervix.” Relying on the instruction of Martin Haskell, another experienced abortionist, the justices related:
The right-handed surgeon slides the fingers of the left [hand] along the back of the fetus and “hooks” the shoulders of the fetus with the index and ring fingers (palm down). While maintaining this tension, lifting the cervix and applying traction to the shoulders with the fingers of the left hand, the surgeon takes a pair of blunt curved Metzenbaum scissors in the right hand. He carefully advances the tip, curved down, along the spine and under his middle finger until he feels it contact the base of the skull under the tip of his middle finger.
The surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull. . . . He spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening. . . . The surgeon [then] removes the scissors and introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents. With the catheter still in place, he applies traction to the fetus, removing it completely from the patient.
“Evacuates the skull contents” may be more bracing than “snip,” but it doesn’t quite do justice to the process and the frightful insouciance behind it. That was left to a nurse who had watched Haskell perform the “procedure” on a six-month-old “however way you want to describe it.” She recalled that, once all but the head had been delivered,
the baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he thinks he is going to fall.
The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening, and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby went completely limp. . . . He cut the umbilical cord and delivered the placenta. He threw the baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instruments he had just used.
Four justices of the United States Supreme Court would have upheld this barbarism. They would not have described it. It is not to be spoken of, only done. After all, to speak of it would infringe upon “choice.”
Speaking of “choice,” if President Obama has the opportunity to choose one more Supreme Court justice over the next four years, the Carhart dissenters will be the majority. Welcome to Philadelphia.
— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the Philadelphia Freedom Center. He is the author, most recently, of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy.
Source: NRO
Abortion is not to be spoken of, only done.
In Philadelphia, at a human abattoir on Lancaster Avenue, is where it ends, not where it starts. It starts with the perversion of language. It starts when the icons of a dissipated culture reduce a baby to a “fetus.” From there, Yeats’s blood-dimmed tide rolls rapidly in. Before long, a baby is not a person but a punishment, as President Barack Obama framed the matter in his familiar off-the-cuff iciness.
Of course, to describe newborn children in their boundless possibilities and wonder would be to acknowledge, foremost, their humanity. That is why, instead, abortion enthusiasts must grope for words when circumstances force them to speak publicly about their gruesome business.
“That fetus, or child — however way you want to describe it,” Mr. Obama once stammered. This was back when, as a state senator, he was unnerved by the natural resistance of babies to the unnatural insistence of their mothers — of the culture — that they just disappear. If you’ve ever watched a hit man testify, you’ve heard the same stammer: the faint glimmer of a long-forgotten but stubbornly indelible line between right and wrong.
It is the line that makes killing much easier to do than to talk about. It is the line that now impels a self-imposed media embargo against news about the shocking trial of Kermit Gosnell.
Gosnell is a 72-year-old abortionist. The formal charges against him — the murders of a woman and seven babies — are but drops in a sea of carnage. Mounting evidence reveals him to be a mass murderer of epic scale and Mengele methods. It also spotlights the evil — the apparently unspeakable evil — of legalized abortion in all its coarsening gore. Plainly, the vaunted journalists of our debased mainstream have determined that there must be no meaningful coverage. No time in the 24/7 cycle to notice the inexorable path from dehumanizing the vulnerable through word games to mass-murdering them with casual sadism.
Better to shove the evidence into a dark closet. That’s what they did in Chicago. There, despite the best efforts of “physicians” (they of the “do no harm” oath), many “however way you want to describe its” were “not just coming out limp and dead,” as Obama haltingly put it. The abortionists’ answer was to stick the helpless survivors in a utility closet where they could die, out of sight and out of mind. Obama, in the pitiless logic of legalized abortion, labored to preserve this oft-practiced but never discussed form of infanticide against the Illinois legislature’s proposed “Born Alive” ban. (See senate transcript, April 4, 2002, beginning at page 29.)
A decade later in Philadelphia, “it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.” So said Stephen Massof, one of Kermit Gosnell’s fellow butchers, as he described for the jury the chamber of horrors that was the “Women’s Medical Society” on Lancaster Avenue. There, scores of babies — perhaps hundreds of them — were willfully mutilated after being born alive.
Standard fare was the “snip.”
“Snip” is a terse, antiseptic word. Like “choice,” it is tailored to those rare, discomfiting occasions when the intentional killing of a “however way you want to describe it” must be spoken of rather than silently done. It is an effort, as much mentally as verbally, to evade the monstrousness we abide in the United States, where nearly 60 million children — a population roughly equal to that of France or the United Kingdom — have been aborted since the Supreme Court’s 1973 fatwa in Roe v. Wade.
In a “snip,” the abortionist, sharp scissors in hand, grasps the squirming and sometimes squealing baby he has just delivered. He stabs the child in the back and then, snapping the blades, severs the spinal cord from the brain. Massof described the snip as “literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.”
He was testifying in exchange for a plea bargain that discounts his participation in numerous such “procedures” to a mere two instances of third-degree murder. After all, most of what he did at the “Women’s Medical Society” was perfectly legal.
The euphemistic “snip” calls to mind the Supreme Court’s opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart, another case about “choice.” Like Gosnell, LeRoy Carhart was an abortion “physician.” In the high court, he joined his progressive friends at Planned Parenthood and the City of San Francisco to defend the “choice” known as “partial birth” abortion — a name soothingly rebranded to “late term” abortion once it became clear that “partial birth” conveyed too much information.
In an uncharacteristically de trop outburst, the five justices in the narrow Carhart majority described varying abortion procedures with startling clinical precision. Most common is the first-trimester “suction curettage,” in which the “physician” vacuums the unwanted “embryonic tissue” from the womb. By the time the second trimester is reached, this “tissue” has matured into the unmistakable shape of a child. Thus the “dilation and evacuation” procedure is often called for.
Employed millions of times in this most civilized country over the last half century, “D&E,” the court explained, involves the “physician’s” use of forceps “to tear apart” the “fetus” by “ripping” it from the cervix and then “evacuating the fetus piece by piece . . . until it has been completely removed” from the mother. Often, the justices observed, the D&E “physician” finds it more congenial to “kill the fetus a day or two before performing the surgical evacuation,” since “medical” experience has shown that, “once dead . . . the fetus’ body will soften,” becoming “easier” to dice and remove. Oh, another helpful tip: “Rotating the fetus as it is being pulled decreases the odds of dismemberment.”
By the time Carhart was decided, Roe v. Wade had been on the books for over a generation — the generation, to be more specific, that is now ruling the roost. It goes without saying — for we wouldn’t want to say it — that, in a nation that has absorbed this generation’s preening “values,” D&E already enjoyed the stamp of judicial approval. The only question before the Carhart Court was whether “partial birth” abortion — “intact D&E” — was beyond the pale.
This “medical procedure” is triggered by an advanced stage of maturation, in which the child’s well-developed head tends to “lodge in the cervix.” Relying on the instruction of Martin Haskell, another experienced abortionist, the justices related:
The right-handed surgeon slides the fingers of the left [hand] along the back of the fetus and “hooks” the shoulders of the fetus with the index and ring fingers (palm down). While maintaining this tension, lifting the cervix and applying traction to the shoulders with the fingers of the left hand, the surgeon takes a pair of blunt curved Metzenbaum scissors in the right hand. He carefully advances the tip, curved down, along the spine and under his middle finger until he feels it contact the base of the skull under the tip of his middle finger.
The surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull. . . . He spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening. . . . The surgeon [then] removes the scissors and introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents. With the catheter still in place, he applies traction to the fetus, removing it completely from the patient.
“Evacuates the skull contents” may be more bracing than “snip,” but it doesn’t quite do justice to the process and the frightful insouciance behind it. That was left to a nurse who had watched Haskell perform the “procedure” on a six-month-old “however way you want to describe it.” She recalled that, once all but the head had been delivered,
the baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he thinks he is going to fall.
The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening, and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby went completely limp. . . . He cut the umbilical cord and delivered the placenta. He threw the baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instruments he had just used.
Four justices of the United States Supreme Court would have upheld this barbarism. They would not have described it. It is not to be spoken of, only done. After all, to speak of it would infringe upon “choice.”
Speaking of “choice,” if President Obama has the opportunity to choose one more Supreme Court justice over the next four years, the Carhart dissenters will be the majority. Welcome to Philadelphia.
— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the Philadelphia Freedom Center. He is the author, most recently, of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy.
Source: NRO
'We're being inundated': Vigilante Group uses secret cameras to record the flow of illegal immigrants across the border
April 13, 2013
A group of private citizens have documented using motion-detector cameras illegal immigrants crossing the border into the United States.
The group, Secure Border Intelligence, also has recorded audio conversations between Border Patrol pilots and agents on the ground which they say document the how porous the border is with Mexico.
'We haven't been in that area for hours... we're being inundated where we're at,' one drone pilot says of the border...
FULL STORY>>
A group of private citizens have documented using motion-detector cameras illegal immigrants crossing the border into the United States.
The group, Secure Border Intelligence, also has recorded audio conversations between Border Patrol pilots and agents on the ground which they say document the how porous the border is with Mexico.
'We haven't been in that area for hours... we're being inundated where we're at,' one drone pilot says of the border...
FULL STORY>>
Friday, April 12, 2013
Inside North Korea: Shock photos show true horror of Kim Jong-un's evil regime
April 12, 2013
(Mirror) - Our reporter at the border uncovers the true story of North Korea that warmongering Kim Jong-un does not want the outside world to see
A child of around 10 sits dying of starvation by the side of the road while just yards away soldiers load enough rice on to trucks to feed families for weeks.
As the young boy slumps on the grimy kerb in his filthy, oversized army jacket, locals stroll past zombie-style without even glancing in his direction or displaying an ounce of pity for his wretched plight.
Nearby his friends scavenge in disease-ridden rubbish tips for scraps of what might pass for food in a land where people are so poor they are forced to eat tree bark or even corpses, according to those on the inside.
And not far away, prisoners are herded from their harsh labour camps to frantically dig out crops from frozen ground while trigger-happy troops hover over them waiting for the one wrong move that could end with death.
This is the real North Korea. The one its warmongering leader Kim Jong-un does not want the outside world to see.
And the vision of hell is a far cry from the Stalinist propaganda pictures peddled out on Wednesday showing smiling people hailing their great leader as if they are the happiest folk around in a land where all is rosy.
The images, taken by brave campaigners desperate to reveal the truth of Kim’s brutal regime, were handed to the Mirror as William Hague warned Pyongyang it faces harsher sanctions if it goes ahead with a fourth missile test.
Speaking at a G8 summit in London, the Foreign Secretary said: “If the DPRK conducts another missile launch or nuclear test we have committed ourselves to take further significant measures.
"We don’t specify what those further significant measures are but clearly what we’re talking about is in the field of sanctions.”
Mr Hague spoke as North Korea moved a missile launcher into position with a range of 2,180 miles amid fears it was training weapons on the US, Japan or Guam.
Dictator Kim continued to ignore the plight of his starving people, while making sure the army was well stocked with food as he sends them to the front line in preparation for war with South Korea.
Near the starving boy – secretly filmed at Yang Gang county, near the Chinese border – bags bursting with food were being hauled on to vehicles destined for the potential battle zones along with the soldiers and millions of pounds worth of weaponry.
Among them were well-dressed young women in high heel boots.
We watched the shocking footage of the misery Kim’s regime is inflicting with Pastor Kim Seung-Eun, a cleric who has helped more than 1,000 North Koreans flee.
Speaking at his home in the South, he said: “There are people in North Korea who are so hungry they have turned to cannibalism.
"One man was shot dead, executed because he ate half of another human being and sold the rest as meat. People are living like animals in that country.
"I do what I can to get as many out as possible but it is very, very dangerous, especially for the people on the inside who help me.
“The person who filmed the footage of the boy focused on him for a reason.
"Someone had told him this boy was dying by the side of the road and he went looking for him.
“It is very distressing. Very upsetting, but I hope the world will be shocked by this footage and help more refugees and defectors to escape that dreadful place.”
The 48-year-old reverend has been sneaking defectors out of the North for several years often bribing hungry border guards and officials for help.
It can cost him £5,000 in planning, rations, bribes for border guards, train and boat tickets. He has also helped bring out video images like the ones above.
They are filmed by critics of the regime who face certain death if caught.
Pastor Kim said: “I cannot tell you if I have been inside, to go to North Korea for South Koreans would be a huge crime.
"But I have friends who take the camera back inside and film the real truth of North Korea. It is important people realise how bad it really is in there.”
These images show how dehumanised North Koreans have become under the Communist government.
Human beings who can walk past children starving to death because they themselves do not have a scrap of food to help has seemingly become the norm.
They are used to a daily diet of death and it has clearly hardened their senses.
One piece of footage shows a border guard pointing his machine gun down the lens of the cameraman after he has been spotted.
The man had been filming from across the Chinese border.
As the guard raises his weapon and takes aim, the snapper flees for his life, screaming in alarm.
These scenes are a world away from the polished streets and tiled walls of the capital Pyongyang from where its elite rule with a murderous iron fist.
In another of the films the near-tree-less countryside comes into view and the camera zooms in on a male and female gulag – a desolate prison in Haesan.
Men and women are seen clawing at the solid ground to get at the crops, no doubt destined for the army and Kim Jong-un’s cronies.
The prisoners are marched out of a labour camp – by soldiers wearing North Korean army uniforms.
A painted sign on the entrance supports Kim and a red star emblem flies above.
They are forced to carry logs to rebuild a small footbridge and are also seen smashing up rocks.
Pastor Kim said: “Many years ago I went to the border between China and North Korea and I will never forget the poverty, so I decided to do something about it.
"This was some of the most dangerous footage ever taken inside North Korea.
“It is impossible to make North Korea look attractive except in Pyongyang. This is the horror truth of the countryside.”
Cruelty and lack of food are typical: Analysis by Rajiv Narayan of Amnesty International
The sight of people doing forced labour echoes what many people have told me. We have also been told of children being left to die in the street.
They are often orphans whose parents have been killed. During the years of severe food shortages this happened a lot.
The guards tell them they are not allowed to do anything to help out.
The labour camp we can see here is a police facility.
It is quite likely that the people we can see have not been convicted of serious crimes; it might be simply a case of going into China to make some money or find some food.
They are detained as soon as they get back into North Korea and put into prison.
What happens at this place, Hyesan, is that men and women are strip-searched when they are back inside North Korea.
There is very limited food here and they use food as a punishment.
If one team of labourers does not fulfil its quota of work they do not get that day’s food ration.
We know of people starving to death and others suffering from severe malnutrition.
There are many horrific stories emerging from here which this film would appear to back up.
Women who have gone into China to find money for their families are sexually exploited by the guards on their way back in.
If you make a mistake you are brutally punished. There are arbitrary executions. Sometimes people are tortured for a perceived mistake.
You can see people in this film involved in mining and breaking rocks under the supervision of an armed guard. They are in chain gangs, as shown here.
This is very typical of the reports we receive.
As can be clearly seen, control is exercised by the guards and the people have no rights, no money and often no food.
At the end of the day they are then returned to huge prison detention centres, in horrific conditions.
North and South Korea tensions in photos
Source: Mirror
(Mirror) - Our reporter at the border uncovers the true story of North Korea that warmongering Kim Jong-un does not want the outside world to see
A child of around 10 sits dying of starvation by the side of the road while just yards away soldiers load enough rice on to trucks to feed families for weeks.
As the young boy slumps on the grimy kerb in his filthy, oversized army jacket, locals stroll past zombie-style without even glancing in his direction or displaying an ounce of pity for his wretched plight.
Nearby his friends scavenge in disease-ridden rubbish tips for scraps of what might pass for food in a land where people are so poor they are forced to eat tree bark or even corpses, according to those on the inside.
And not far away, prisoners are herded from their harsh labour camps to frantically dig out crops from frozen ground while trigger-happy troops hover over them waiting for the one wrong move that could end with death.
This is the real North Korea. The one its warmongering leader Kim Jong-un does not want the outside world to see.
 |
| Wretched: Child on the street is ignored |
The images, taken by brave campaigners desperate to reveal the truth of Kim’s brutal regime, were handed to the Mirror as William Hague warned Pyongyang it faces harsher sanctions if it goes ahead with a fourth missile test.
Speaking at a G8 summit in London, the Foreign Secretary said: “If the DPRK conducts another missile launch or nuclear test we have committed ourselves to take further significant measures.
"We don’t specify what those further significant measures are but clearly what we’re talking about is in the field of sanctions.”
Mr Hague spoke as North Korea moved a missile launcher into position with a range of 2,180 miles amid fears it was training weapons on the US, Japan or Guam.
Dictator Kim continued to ignore the plight of his starving people, while making sure the army was well stocked with food as he sends them to the front line in preparation for war with South Korea.
 |
| Dying in the Gutter: Food is put in truck while boy lies starving |
Among them were well-dressed young women in high heel boots.
We watched the shocking footage of the misery Kim’s regime is inflicting with Pastor Kim Seung-Eun, a cleric who has helped more than 1,000 North Koreans flee.
Speaking at his home in the South, he said: “There are people in North Korea who are so hungry they have turned to cannibalism.
"One man was shot dead, executed because he ate half of another human being and sold the rest as meat. People are living like animals in that country.
"I do what I can to get as many out as possible but it is very, very dangerous, especially for the people on the inside who help me.
“The person who filmed the footage of the boy focused on him for a reason.
"Someone had told him this boy was dying by the side of the road and he went looking for him.
“It is very distressing. Very upsetting, but I hope the world will be shocked by this footage and help more refugees and defectors to escape that dreadful place.”
 |
| Toiling the Fields: Digging in frozen soil |
It can cost him £5,000 in planning, rations, bribes for border guards, train and boat tickets. He has also helped bring out video images like the ones above.
They are filmed by critics of the regime who face certain death if caught.
Pastor Kim said: “I cannot tell you if I have been inside, to go to North Korea for South Koreans would be a huge crime.
"But I have friends who take the camera back inside and film the real truth of North Korea. It is important people realise how bad it really is in there.”
 |
| Forced March: Prisoners going to pick up stones |
Human beings who can walk past children starving to death because they themselves do not have a scrap of food to help has seemingly become the norm.
They are used to a daily diet of death and it has clearly hardened their senses.
One piece of footage shows a border guard pointing his machine gun down the lens of the cameraman after he has been spotted.
The man had been filming from across the Chinese border.
As the guard raises his weapon and takes aim, the snapper flees for his life, screaming in alarm.
 |
| In Gaurd's Gunsight: Cameraman is spotted |
In another of the films the near-tree-less countryside comes into view and the camera zooms in on a male and female gulag – a desolate prison in Haesan.
Men and women are seen clawing at the solid ground to get at the crops, no doubt destined for the army and Kim Jong-un’s cronies.
The prisoners are marched out of a labour camp – by soldiers wearing North Korean army uniforms.
A painted sign on the entrance supports Kim and a red star emblem flies above.
They are forced to carry logs to rebuild a small footbridge and are also seen smashing up rocks.
Pastor Kim said: “Many years ago I went to the border between China and North Korea and I will never forget the poverty, so I decided to do something about it.
"This was some of the most dangerous footage ever taken inside North Korea.
“It is impossible to make North Korea look attractive except in Pyongyang. This is the horror truth of the countryside.”
Cruelty and lack of food are typical: Analysis by Rajiv Narayan of Amnesty International
The sight of people doing forced labour echoes what many people have told me. We have also been told of children being left to die in the street.
They are often orphans whose parents have been killed. During the years of severe food shortages this happened a lot.
The guards tell them they are not allowed to do anything to help out.
The labour camp we can see here is a police facility.
It is quite likely that the people we can see have not been convicted of serious crimes; it might be simply a case of going into China to make some money or find some food.
 |
| Slave camp: Inmates carrying food |
What happens at this place, Hyesan, is that men and women are strip-searched when they are back inside North Korea.
There is very limited food here and they use food as a punishment.
If one team of labourers does not fulfil its quota of work they do not get that day’s food ration.
We know of people starving to death and others suffering from severe malnutrition.
There are many horrific stories emerging from here which this film would appear to back up.
 |
| Killer Heels: Female soldiers on the border |
If you make a mistake you are brutally punished. There are arbitrary executions. Sometimes people are tortured for a perceived mistake.
You can see people in this film involved in mining and breaking rocks under the supervision of an armed guard. They are in chain gangs, as shown here.
This is very typical of the reports we receive.
As can be clearly seen, control is exercised by the guards and the people have no rights, no money and often no food.
At the end of the day they are then returned to huge prison detention centres, in horrific conditions.
North and South Korea tensions in photos
 |
| View the photo gallery |
Source: Mirror
Shades of Benghazi: State Department changes story on Afghanistan blast that killed diplomat
April 12, 2013
The State Department has acknowledged that five U.S. personnel killed in Afghanistan, including 25-year-old diplomat Anne Smedinghoff, were on foot when they were attacked by a suicide bomber, and not in an armored vehicle, as officials had told bereaved relatives earlier this week.
The violent deaths of U.S. diplomatic personnel — and the State Department’s changing account of how they died — harken back to the debacle in Benghazi, Libya, where Islamist extremists killed four Americans in assaults on the U.S. diplomatic compound on Sept. 11.
FULL STORY>>
 |
| Photo by: Uncredited This undated photo provided by Tom Smedinghoff, shows Anne Smedinghoff. Anne Smedinghoff, 25, was killed Saturday, April 6, 2013 in southern Afghanistan , the first American diplomat to die on the job since last year's attack on the U.S. diplomatic installation in Benghazi, Libya. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Tom Smedinghoff) |
The violent deaths of U.S. diplomatic personnel — and the State Department’s changing account of how they died — harken back to the debacle in Benghazi, Libya, where Islamist extremists killed four Americans in assaults on the U.S. diplomatic compound on Sept. 11.
FULL STORY>>
Pathetic: Even "Punks" have more empathy for the dead than the Radical Left
April 12, 2013
Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten attacks hate mobs celebrating Baroness Thatcher's death as 'loathsome' and calls for respect
Former Sex Pistol John Lydon says those now celebrating Margaret Thatcher's death are 'loathsome'.
Lydon, famously known as Johnny Rotten when he was the singer in Punk icons The Sex Pistols back in the 1970s as Maggie was rising to power, added: 'I'm not going to dance on her grave.'
He said: 'I was her enemy in her life but I will not be her enemy in her death.'
Read more...
Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten attacks hate mobs celebrating Baroness Thatcher's death as 'loathsome' and calls for respect
Lydon, famously known as Johnny Rotten when he was the singer in Punk icons The Sex Pistols back in the 1970s as Maggie was rising to power, added: 'I'm not going to dance on her grave.'
He said: 'I was her enemy in her life but I will not be her enemy in her death.'
Read more...
Second Chicago girl falls victim to gun epidemic hours after Michelle Obama shed tears for slain 15-year-old
April 12, 2013
Hours after First Lady Michelle Obama tearfully mourned the death of a 15-year-old girl who was shot in her Chicago hometown a second girl of the same age and in the same city has been critically wounded by gunfire.
The unidentified girl was shot near her stomach around 1pm on the South Side of the city's Grand Crossing neighborhood, roughly four miles south of where Hadiya Pendleton was killed on January 29.
Just about 20 minutes later a 27-year-old man was shot in the leg in the same neighborhood, the Chicago Tribune reports.
FULL STORY>>
The unidentified girl was shot near her stomach around 1pm on the South Side of the city's Grand Crossing neighborhood, roughly four miles south of where Hadiya Pendleton was killed on January 29.
Just about 20 minutes later a 27-year-old man was shot in the leg in the same neighborhood, the Chicago Tribune reports.
FULL STORY>>
Moonbeam Jerry's Brilliance Directly Responsible for Crime Surge
April 12, 2013
CA Crime Skyrockets in Wake of Brown's Prison Release Plan
In 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law California Assembly Bill 109, a piece of legislation designed to relieve overcrowded prisons in accordance with a Supreme Court decision. AB 109 enshrined “realignment” into law – a plan to place supposedly “non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenders” in county jails rather than state prisons. In other words, local governments were handed the problem of prisoners the state didn’t want to hold. On January 8, 2013, Brown said, “we’ve gone from serious constitutional problems to one of the finest prison systems in the United States.”
Keep Reading>>
CA Crime Skyrockets in Wake of Brown's Prison Release Plan
Keep Reading>>
Common Sense Update: Texas House panel approves guns on campus bill
April 12, 2013
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Two days after a knife-wielding attacker wounded more than a dozen people on a Texas college campus, a state House panel voted to allow concealed handgun license holders to carry weapons into college buildings and classrooms.
Continue Reading..
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Two days after a knife-wielding attacker wounded more than a dozen people on a Texas college campus, a state House panel voted to allow concealed handgun license holders to carry weapons into college buildings and classrooms.
Continue Reading..
Gosnell Witness: I assisted in abortions while in high school
April 12, 2013
Like a lot of high school sophomores, 15-year-old Ashley Baldwin found a job.
Baldwin, however, wasn't working retail or fast-food. She was doing ultrasounds, administering intravenous medicine and, ultimately, assisting in abortions performed by West Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell.
Baldwin, now 22, and the mother of a two-year-old, today told a Philadelphia jury hearing Gosnell's murder trial of her unusual hands-on medical apprenticeship.
She also told of seeing at least five aborted babies moving, breathing and, in one case, "screeching," after procedures at Gosnells' Women's Medical Society clinic at 3801 Lancaster Ave....
READ THE FULL STORY>>
Like a lot of high school sophomores, 15-year-old Ashley Baldwin found a job.
Baldwin, however, wasn't working retail or fast-food. She was doing ultrasounds, administering intravenous medicine and, ultimately, assisting in abortions performed by West Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell.
Baldwin, now 22, and the mother of a two-year-old, today told a Philadelphia jury hearing Gosnell's murder trial of her unusual hands-on medical apprenticeship.
She also told of seeing at least five aborted babies moving, breathing and, in one case, "screeching," after procedures at Gosnells' Women's Medical Society clinic at 3801 Lancaster Ave....
READ THE FULL STORY>>
‘War on coal’ may burn EPA nominee; GOP senators question Gina McCarthy’s record
April 12, 2013
The Obama-appointed obsession with Janet Reno lookalikes continues...
With the Environmental Protection Agency set to play the central role in President Obama’s second-term climate change agenda, would-be agency chief Gina McCarthy on Thursday tried to calm Republican fears that she would continue the perceived “war on coal” and other harsh regulations under her predecessor.
FULL STORY>>
The Obama-appointed obsession with Janet Reno lookalikes continues...
FULL STORY>>
N. Korea UPDATE: Japan On Alert
April 12, 2013
Japanese PAC-3 patriot batteries at Min of Defense activated to shoot down any N Korean...
source: aymanm
Japanese PAC-3 patriot batteries at Min of Defense activated to shoot down any N Korean...
source: aymanm
Police, ‘anti-gun’ prosecutor clash with soldiers in area around Fort Hood
April 12, 2013
The conflict reached a fever pitch last month, when Texas police arrested an active-duty army sergeant for “rudely displaying” a hunting rifle.
FULL STORY>>
FULL STORY>>
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Survivor of '63 Ala. church bombing wants massive amounts of money
April 11, 2013
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The lone survivor of a 1963 Alabama church bombing that killed four black girls said Wednesday she wants millions in compensation for her injuries and won't accept a top congressional award proposed to honor the victims.
Sarah Collins Rudolph, in an interview with The Associated Press, said she feels forgotten 50 years after the blast shocked the nation. Rudolph lost an eye in the Sept. 16, 1963 bombing at Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and says she never got restitution.
"We haven't received anything, and I lost an eye," said Rudolph, who lives north of Birmingham. "They just want to throw a medal at us."
Congress is considering whether to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the four girls who died: 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, and 11-year-old Denise McNair. Addie Mae was the sister of Rudolph, who was 12 at the time and was in a downstairs washroom with the four girls when the blast occurred. At least two dozen others were injured.
The brother of Cynthia Wesley said he isn't interested in the award either and wants compensation, partly because history didn't even record his sister's name correctly.
U.S. Reps. Terri Sewell, a Democrat, and Spencer Bachus, a Republican, announced a bipartisan effort in January to award the medal to the church bombing victims. The medal represents the highest civilian honor that Congress can bestow. Recipients have ranged from George Washington to civil rights figure Rosa Parks, Pope John Paul II and "Peanuts' creator Charles M. Schulz.
The church bombing shocked the nation and was a galvanizing moment in the civil rights movement.
The five girls were preparing for Sunday services in the washroom near the wall where the bomb was planted outside.
It was more than a decade before any successful prosecutions were brought in the case.
Juries convicted three Ku Klux Klansmen in the bombing years later, and one suspected accomplice died without ever having been charged; one of the four is still in prison and the others are dead.
But Rudolph said she still hasn't gotten justice like other crime victims who receive restitution payments.
"My sister was killed and I lost my eye. Why should I be any different?" said Rudolph, who says she still suffers from painful memories, physical scars and posttraumatic stress syndrome.
Rudolph said she wants compensation "in the millions" for her injuries and the death of Addie Mae, but she hasn't settled on an exact amount.
Fate Morris said he also will refuse the medal and wants compensation like Rudolph for the death of his sister, typically referred to as Cynthia Wesley. Morris said her real name was Cynthia Morris, and no medal will replace the mistake.
"It's a smoke screen to shut us up and make us go away so we'll never be heard from again," Morris told AP.
Morris said his sister was staying with a family named "Wesley" at the time of the bombing to get into a good school, but she still came back to the Morris household on weekends. Authorities mistakenly recorded her last name as "Wesley" and never fixed the error, he said, until the family sought an amended death certificate decades later.
Morris said he vividly recalls hearing the blast that morning and running to the church with friends to help dig through the rubble. He remembers people calling out about finding bodies amid broken bricks but said he left in fear before his sister's remains were found.
Morris, sobbing during an interview, said a friend told him moments later that Cynthia's decapitated remains had been found. He said he's never shaken the pain.
"I left her buried in a pile of bricks. That's all I could think of," he said through tears.
Stephanie Engle, an activist who is publicizing the families' push for compensation, said victims of the bombing deserve reparation just like Japanese Americans who received payments through a $1.6 billion program decades after being held in internment camps during World War II.
Birmingham's entire Jim Crow structure of racial segregation created a climate of fear and hate that resulted in the girls' deaths, she said. Engle said "medals, statues, and 'pomp-and-circumstance ceremonies' are not a substitution for justice, moral, and historical accountability."
Press aides to Sewell and Bachus did not return messages seeking comment on the status of the legislation for the medals.
The Alabama Crime Victims' Compensation Commission helps crime victims and families with expenses stemming from a crime, but Executive Director Cassie Jones said state law does not allow it to address crimes that occurred before the agency was created in 1984. She said it doesn't matter if the conviction occurred after 1984, as happened in this case. "We are not able to compensate anyone where there was a crime before it became an agency," she said.
She said the Justice Department has a program to assist crime victims, but she doesn't know how far back it can go.
Robert Sedler, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who has litigated major civil rights cases, said Congress has the power to approve compensation to victims such as Rudolph.
"These people are victims of a long and tragic history of racial discrimination in the southern states and Congress on behalf of the people can provide compensation for the victims," he said.
As for the church bombing victims and families, Sedler said their argument is strengthened by the fact that Alabama authorities were nor protecting the rights of blacks at the time. He noted that Birmingham's public safety commissioner then was the notoriously racist Bull Connor.
"Violence was encouraged," he said. "Local law enforcement officials did not enforce the law to protect minority rights... The people who blew up the church, they believed that they could do it with impunity."
The viciousness of the bombing drew national attention to Birmingham, where authorities used fire hoses and police dogs to turn back black marchers months earlier the same year. Congress passed the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act within a year of the bombing, which came to symbolize the depth of racial hatred in the South.
Rudolph's comments come a week after Alabama lawmakers address another major episode in civil rights history. Legislators voted to allow posthumous pardons for the "Scottsboro Boys," nine black teens who were wrongly convicted of raping two white women more than 80 years ago.
Associated Press writer Phil Rawls in Montgomery contributed to this story.
 |
| Associated Press/Jay Reeves - Sarah Collins Rudolph, the lone survivor of a 1963 church bombing, and Fate Morris, whose sister died in the blast, discuss their desire for compensation from the bombing during an interview in Birmingham, Ala., on Wednesday, April 10, 2013. Rudolph was badly injured in the bombing, which killed sister Addie Mae Collins, and Morris said he is still haunted by memories of digging through the church rubble. The two say they will turn down a proposed Congressional Gold Medal honoring the victims. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves) |
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The lone survivor of a 1963 Alabama church bombing that killed four black girls said Wednesday she wants millions in compensation for her injuries and won't accept a top congressional award proposed to honor the victims.
Sarah Collins Rudolph, in an interview with The Associated Press, said she feels forgotten 50 years after the blast shocked the nation. Rudolph lost an eye in the Sept. 16, 1963 bombing at Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and says she never got restitution.
"We haven't received anything, and I lost an eye," said Rudolph, who lives north of Birmingham. "They just want to throw a medal at us."
Congress is considering whether to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the four girls who died: 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, and 11-year-old Denise McNair. Addie Mae was the sister of Rudolph, who was 12 at the time and was in a downstairs washroom with the four girls when the blast occurred. At least two dozen others were injured.
The brother of Cynthia Wesley said he isn't interested in the award either and wants compensation, partly because history didn't even record his sister's name correctly.
U.S. Reps. Terri Sewell, a Democrat, and Spencer Bachus, a Republican, announced a bipartisan effort in January to award the medal to the church bombing victims. The medal represents the highest civilian honor that Congress can bestow. Recipients have ranged from George Washington to civil rights figure Rosa Parks, Pope John Paul II and "Peanuts' creator Charles M. Schulz.
The church bombing shocked the nation and was a galvanizing moment in the civil rights movement.
The five girls were preparing for Sunday services in the washroom near the wall where the bomb was planted outside.
It was more than a decade before any successful prosecutions were brought in the case.
Juries convicted three Ku Klux Klansmen in the bombing years later, and one suspected accomplice died without ever having been charged; one of the four is still in prison and the others are dead.
But Rudolph said she still hasn't gotten justice like other crime victims who receive restitution payments.
"My sister was killed and I lost my eye. Why should I be any different?" said Rudolph, who says she still suffers from painful memories, physical scars and posttraumatic stress syndrome.
Rudolph said she wants compensation "in the millions" for her injuries and the death of Addie Mae, but she hasn't settled on an exact amount.
Fate Morris said he also will refuse the medal and wants compensation like Rudolph for the death of his sister, typically referred to as Cynthia Wesley. Morris said her real name was Cynthia Morris, and no medal will replace the mistake.
"It's a smoke screen to shut us up and make us go away so we'll never be heard from again," Morris told AP.
Morris said his sister was staying with a family named "Wesley" at the time of the bombing to get into a good school, but she still came back to the Morris household on weekends. Authorities mistakenly recorded her last name as "Wesley" and never fixed the error, he said, until the family sought an amended death certificate decades later.
Morris said he vividly recalls hearing the blast that morning and running to the church with friends to help dig through the rubble. He remembers people calling out about finding bodies amid broken bricks but said he left in fear before his sister's remains were found.
Morris, sobbing during an interview, said a friend told him moments later that Cynthia's decapitated remains had been found. He said he's never shaken the pain.
"I left her buried in a pile of bricks. That's all I could think of," he said through tears.
Stephanie Engle, an activist who is publicizing the families' push for compensation, said victims of the bombing deserve reparation just like Japanese Americans who received payments through a $1.6 billion program decades after being held in internment camps during World War II.
Birmingham's entire Jim Crow structure of racial segregation created a climate of fear and hate that resulted in the girls' deaths, she said. Engle said "medals, statues, and 'pomp-and-circumstance ceremonies' are not a substitution for justice, moral, and historical accountability."
Press aides to Sewell and Bachus did not return messages seeking comment on the status of the legislation for the medals.
The Alabama Crime Victims' Compensation Commission helps crime victims and families with expenses stemming from a crime, but Executive Director Cassie Jones said state law does not allow it to address crimes that occurred before the agency was created in 1984. She said it doesn't matter if the conviction occurred after 1984, as happened in this case. "We are not able to compensate anyone where there was a crime before it became an agency," she said.
She said the Justice Department has a program to assist crime victims, but she doesn't know how far back it can go.
Robert Sedler, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who has litigated major civil rights cases, said Congress has the power to approve compensation to victims such as Rudolph.
"These people are victims of a long and tragic history of racial discrimination in the southern states and Congress on behalf of the people can provide compensation for the victims," he said.
As for the church bombing victims and families, Sedler said their argument is strengthened by the fact that Alabama authorities were nor protecting the rights of blacks at the time. He noted that Birmingham's public safety commissioner then was the notoriously racist Bull Connor.
"Violence was encouraged," he said. "Local law enforcement officials did not enforce the law to protect minority rights... The people who blew up the church, they believed that they could do it with impunity."
The viciousness of the bombing drew national attention to Birmingham, where authorities used fire hoses and police dogs to turn back black marchers months earlier the same year. Congress passed the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act within a year of the bombing, which came to symbolize the depth of racial hatred in the South.
Rudolph's comments come a week after Alabama lawmakers address another major episode in civil rights history. Legislators voted to allow posthumous pardons for the "Scottsboro Boys," nine black teens who were wrongly convicted of raping two white women more than 80 years ago.
Associated Press writer Phil Rawls in Montgomery contributed to this story.
NBC's David Gregory Reportedly Has Diva Moment Over Street Parking In His Wealthy D.C. Neighborhood
April 11, 2013
NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory reportedly threw quite the tantrum on Tuesday over a charity event held on a street near his home that has temporarily caused a shortage of on-street parking.
FULL STORY>>
FULL STORY>>
Dead silence
April 11, 2013
Normally those of us in the news business love trials, the more sensational the better. Just look at the coverage of the Jodi Arias murder trial in Maricopa County, Ariz. — or earlier national obsessions with Casey Anthony and O.J. Simpson.
Which makes the media blackout of one ongoing trial a mystery. Or maybe not.
In Philadelphia, Kermit Gosnell is on trial on eight counts of murder: seven for babies he’s accused of killing with scissors after they were born, and one for a pregnant refugee who died after receiving an overdose of drugs. If true, Gosnell was running a slaughterhouse out of the Middle Ages.
Former employees have testified to the gruesome conditions at a clinic that catered to poor, minority clients. One staffer — who has pleaded guilty to the murder of two babies — calls what they did “like a beheading.”
Gosnell himself was making a fortune, taking in up to $15,000 a day. Police seized $250,000 in cash from his home. He also faces a separate federal trial for illegal distribution of prescription drugs.
The trial is receiving intensive coverage in Philadelphia and across the conservative press and Web sites. But national networks and newspapers? Not so much.
The reason seems obvious: Much of our press corps skews to one side on abortion. So even though what Gosnell is charged with is closer to infanticide — an unlicensed abortionist profiting mightily by killing the newborn babies of poor, minority women — somehow it’s not news.
Isn’t that a scandal, too?
source: new york post
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| Kermit Gosnell |
Which makes the media blackout of one ongoing trial a mystery. Or maybe not.
In Philadelphia, Kermit Gosnell is on trial on eight counts of murder: seven for babies he’s accused of killing with scissors after they were born, and one for a pregnant refugee who died after receiving an overdose of drugs. If true, Gosnell was running a slaughterhouse out of the Middle Ages.
Former employees have testified to the gruesome conditions at a clinic that catered to poor, minority clients. One staffer — who has pleaded guilty to the murder of two babies — calls what they did “like a beheading.”
Gosnell himself was making a fortune, taking in up to $15,000 a day. Police seized $250,000 in cash from his home. He also faces a separate federal trial for illegal distribution of prescription drugs.
The trial is receiving intensive coverage in Philadelphia and across the conservative press and Web sites. But national networks and newspapers? Not so much.
The reason seems obvious: Much of our press corps skews to one side on abortion. So even though what Gosnell is charged with is closer to infanticide — an unlicensed abortionist profiting mightily by killing the newborn babies of poor, minority women — somehow it’s not news.
Isn’t that a scandal, too?
source: new york post
Michelle Obama Compares Herself to Murdered Teenager
April 11, 2013
In a speech that addressed youth violence in Chicago, First Lady Michelle Obama compared herself to Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl murdered soon after attending President Obama's Second Inauguration. "Hadiya Pendleton was me, and I was her," said the first lady.
MORE
In a speech that addressed youth violence in Chicago, First Lady Michelle Obama compared herself to Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl murdered soon after attending President Obama's Second Inauguration. "Hadiya Pendleton was me, and I was her," said the first lady.
MORE
Anti-American Syrian Forces Slated For American Aid
April 11, 2013
Terrorism: As Syria's Islamist rebels merge with al-Qaida, Secretary of State John Kerry mulls more U.S. support for them. Can anyone explain what President Obama is doing to the Mideast?
Continue to article..
Terrorism: As Syria's Islamist rebels merge with al-Qaida, Secretary of State John Kerry mulls more U.S. support for them. Can anyone explain what President Obama is doing to the Mideast?
Continue to article..
Eric Holder’s Schedule: Frequent Meetings With Race-Based Groups
April 11, 2013
Nearly 50 meetings in a nine-month period.
Attorney General Eric Holder began his tenure by calling Americans cowards regarding racial issues. Newly released documents reveal that Holder’s schedule shows a preoccupation with racial issues: he spends an inordinate amount of time meeting with race-centered organizations.
FULL STORY>>
Nearly 50 meetings in a nine-month period.
Attorney General Eric Holder began his tenure by calling Americans cowards regarding racial issues. Newly released documents reveal that Holder’s schedule shows a preoccupation with racial issues: he spends an inordinate amount of time meeting with race-centered organizations.
FULL STORY>>
New Jersey spent $18,047 per pupil in public schools last year
April 11, 2013
New Jersey districts spent an average of $18,047 per pupil in 2011-12, up 4 percent from the year before, the state said Wednesday.
MORE>>
New Jersey districts spent an average of $18,047 per pupil in 2011-12, up 4 percent from the year before, the state said Wednesday.
MORE>>
ObamaFAIL: 3 million Californians could receive health insurance subsidies
April 11, 2013
Some Republicans still cling to the hope that they'll be able to repeal Obamacare someday, but a report released Wednesday by Families USA shows why it may be even harder for them to do so after Jan. 1.
The report estimates that nearly 3 million Californians could be eligible for generous insurance subsidies under the 2010 healthcare reform law, starting next year. Anyone with an income between one and four times the federal poverty line -- in other words, between $23,550 and $94,200 for a family of four -- could receive a tax credit that reduces monthly premiums dramatically.
Keep reading>>
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| This is a draft copy of the proposed 21-page application form for insurance from Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program or subsidized private policies offered through a federally run insurance exchange. |
The report estimates that nearly 3 million Californians could be eligible for generous insurance subsidies under the 2010 healthcare reform law, starting next year. Anyone with an income between one and four times the federal poverty line -- in other words, between $23,550 and $94,200 for a family of four -- could receive a tax credit that reduces monthly premiums dramatically.
Keep reading>>
The Apple Never Fall Far From The Tree: Daughter of Obama's former pastor charged with fraud
April 11, 2013
(Reuters) - The daughter of President Barack Obama's controversial former pastor was indicted on Wednesday on charges of money laundering and lying to federal authorities, a Justice Department spokeswoman said.
Jeri L. Wright, 47, the daughter of Jeremiah Wright, was accused of participating in a fraud scheme led by a former suburban police chief and the chief's husband that involved a $1.25 million state grant, according to the Attorney's office for the Central District of Illinois in Springfield.
Wright, of the Chicago suburb of Hazel Crest, was charged with two counts of money laundering, two counts of making false statements to federal officers, and seven counts of giving false testimony to a grand jury.
The state grant was for a not-for-profit work and education program called We Are Our Brother's Keeper, owned by Regina Evans, former police chief of Country Club Hills, and her husband, Ronald W. Evans, Jr.
According to the indictment, Wright, a close friend of the couple, received three checks in 2009 worth about $28,000 that were supposed to be for work related to the grant. About $20,000 of that was allegedly deposited back into accounts controlled by the Evanses.
Jeremiah Wright was the Chicago pastor whose inflammatory church sermons, which often condemned U.S. attitudes on race, poverty, the Iraq War and other issues, became a focus during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Obama quieted the controversy with a speech putting the quotes in the context of race relations.
The money laundering count Jeri Wright faces carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison, while the other charges carry penalties of up to five years in prison.
Jeri Wright could not be reached for comment. Prosecutor's office spokeswoman Sharon Paul did not know if she had yet retained a lawyer.
(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Bill Trott)
(Reuters) - The daughter of President Barack Obama's controversial former pastor was indicted on Wednesday on charges of money laundering and lying to federal authorities, a Justice Department spokeswoman said.
Jeri L. Wright, 47, the daughter of Jeremiah Wright, was accused of participating in a fraud scheme led by a former suburban police chief and the chief's husband that involved a $1.25 million state grant, according to the Attorney's office for the Central District of Illinois in Springfield.
Wright, of the Chicago suburb of Hazel Crest, was charged with two counts of money laundering, two counts of making false statements to federal officers, and seven counts of giving false testimony to a grand jury.
The state grant was for a not-for-profit work and education program called We Are Our Brother's Keeper, owned by Regina Evans, former police chief of Country Club Hills, and her husband, Ronald W. Evans, Jr.
According to the indictment, Wright, a close friend of the couple, received three checks in 2009 worth about $28,000 that were supposed to be for work related to the grant. About $20,000 of that was allegedly deposited back into accounts controlled by the Evanses.
Jeremiah Wright was the Chicago pastor whose inflammatory church sermons, which often condemned U.S. attitudes on race, poverty, the Iraq War and other issues, became a focus during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Obama quieted the controversy with a speech putting the quotes in the context of race relations.
The money laundering count Jeri Wright faces carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison, while the other charges carry penalties of up to five years in prison.
Jeri Wright could not be reached for comment. Prosecutor's office spokeswoman Sharon Paul did not know if she had yet retained a lawyer.
(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Bill Trott)