Flag-folding recitations for vets banned because of religious content

Because that one (1) person was offended by the flag folding ceremony, the federal government bans it and offends millions of people. Our government has got so politically correct that I'm wondering how much longer it can operate as a government.

RIVERSIDE,California - Complaints about religious content have led to a ban on flag-folding recitations by Veterans Administration employees and volunteers at all 125 national cemeteries. It all started because of one complaint about the ceremony at Riverside National Cemetery in California.

During thousands of military burials, the volunteers have folded the American flag 13 times and recited the significance of every fold to survivors. For example, the 12th fold glorifies "God the Father, the Son and Holy Ghost."

The complaint revolved around the narration in the 11th fold, which celebrates Jewish war veterans and "glorifies the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob."

The National Cemetery Administration decided to ban the entire recital at all national cemeteries. Details of the complaint weren't disclosed.

Administration spokesman Mike Nacincik said the new policy outlined in a Sept. 27 memorandum is aimed at creating uniform services throughout the military graveyard system. He said the 13-fold recital is not part of the U.S. Flag Code and is not government-approved.

Veterans and honor detail volunteers, including Bobby Castillo, 85, and Rees Lloyd, 59, are furious. "That the actions of one disgruntled, whining, narcissistic and intolerant individual is preventing veterans from getting the honors they deserve is truly an outrage," Lloyd said. "This is another attempt by secularist fanatics to cleanse any reference to God."

World War II Navy veteran Castillo said it's "a slap in the face to every veteran."

"When we got back from the war, we didn't ask for a whole lot," Castillo said. "We just want to give our veterans the respect they deserve. No one has ever complained to us about it. I just don't understand."

Lloyd and Castillo are part of a 16-member detail that has performed military honors at more than 1,400 services. They were preparing to read the flag-folding remarks at the Riverside cemetery when graveyard staff members stopped them.

Charlie Waters, parliamentarian for the American Legion of California, said he's advising memorial honor details to ignore the edict. "This is nuts," Waters told the Riverside Press-Enterprise by telephone from Fresno. "There are 26 million veterans in this country, and they're not going to take us all to prison."

Nacincik said that though the flag-folding narrative includes references to God that the government does not endorse, the main reason for the new rules is uniformity. "We are looking at consistency," Nacincik said. "We think that's important."

Rabbi Yitzhak Miller of Temple Beth El said he understands the ban. "It is a perfect example of government choosing to ignore religion in order to avoid offending some religions," Miller said. "To me, ignoring religion in general is just as problematic as endorsing any one religion."

An Ode to America

We rarely get a chance to see another country's editorial about the USA. Read this excerpt from a Romanian Newspaper. The article was written by Mr. Cornel Nistorescu and published under the title "C"ntarea Americii, meaning "Ode To America ") in the Romanian newspaper Evenimentulzilei "The Daily Event" or "News of the Day"

~An Ode to America ~

Why are Americans so united? They would not resemble one another even if you painted them all one color! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations and religious beliefs.

Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart.

Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the Army, or the Secret Service that they are only a bunch of losers.

Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts.

Nobody rushed out onto the streets nearby to gape about.

Instead the Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand.

After the first moments of panic, they raised their flag over the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colors of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a government official or the president was passing. On every occasion, they started singing:"God Bless America !"

I watched the live broadcast and rerun after rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have killed other hundreds or thousands of people.

How on earth were they able to respond united as one human being? Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put into a collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit, which no money can buy.

What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way?

Their land? Their history? Their economic Power? Money?

I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases with the risk of sounding commonplace, I thought things over, I reached but only one conclusion... Only freedom can work such miracles.

Cornel Nistorescu

Islamic School In VirginiaTeaches Hatred

We have enough problems already and sure don't need more right here on our own turf.

From Here:

McLEAN, Va. - A private Islamic school supported by the Saudi government should be shut down until the U.S. government can ensure the school is not fostering radical Islam, a federal panel recommends.

In a report released Thursday, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom broadly criticized what it calls a lack of religious freedom in Saudi society and promotion of religious extremism at Saudi schools.

Particular criticism is leveled at the Islamic Saudi Academy, a private school serving nearly 1,000 students in grades K-12 at two campuses in northern Virginia's Fairfax County.

The commission's report says the academy hews closely to the curriculum used at Saudi schools, which they criticize for promoting hatred of and intolerance against Jews, Christians and Shiite Muslims.

"Significant concerns remain about whether what is being taught at the ISA promotes religious intolerance and may adversely affect the interests of the United States," the report states.

The commission, a creation of Congress, has no power to implement policy on its own. Instead, it makes recommendations to other agencies.

The commission does not offer specific criticism of the academy's teachings beyond its concerns that it too closely mimics a typical Saudi education.

The report recommends that the State Department prevail on the Saudi government to shut the school down until the school's textbooks can be reviewed and procedures are put in place to ensure the school's independence form the Saudi Embassy.

Messages left Wednesday with the State Department and the Saudi Embassy were not immediately returned.

Several advocacy groups in recent years have cited examples of inflammatory statements in religious textbooks in Saudi Arabia, including claims that a ninth-grade textbook reads that the hour of judgment will not come "until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them."

Saudi officials said they have worked in recent years to reform the textbooks and the curriculum, but critics say progress has been insufficient.

The school's director-general, Abdalla I. Al-Shabnan, said Wednesday that he had not seen the report. He said the academy has adjusted its curriculum in recent years and removed some of the inflammatory language that had been included in the Saudi text. The school's curriculum may now serve as a model for the Saudi government to use in continuing its reform of Saudi schools, he said.

"There is nothing in our curriculum against any religion," Al-Shabnan said.

He also said he is willing to show the school's curriculum and textbooks to anybody who wants to see them, and he expressed disappointment that the commission did not request materials directly from the school.

"We have an open policy," he said.

He also pointed out that many of the school's teachers are Christian and Jewish.

The commission based its findings in part on a the work of a delegation that traveled to Saudi Arabia this year. The commission asked embassy officials to review the textbooks used in Saudi schools generally and at the Islamic Saudi Academy specifically but did not receive a response.

Commission spokeswoman Judith Ingram said the commission did not request to speak to academy officials because that went beyond the commission's mandate.

The report also criticizes the school's administrative structure, saying it is little more than an offshoot of the Saudi Embassy, with the Saudi ambassador to the United States serving as chairman of the school's board of directors. The structure "raises serious concerns about whether it is in violation of a U.S. law restricting the activities of foreign embassies."

After the Sept. 11 attacks, critics questioned the nature of the religious education at the Saudi academy. The school again found itself in the spotlight in 2005, when a former class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was charged with joining al-Qaida while attending college in Saudi Arabia and plotting to assassinate President Bush.

Abu Ali was convicted in federal court and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He is appealing his conviction.

Mexican military, U.S. police have border standoff in Texas

This news article was posted on WND and then disappeared. I managed to capture it before it was erased...... I found it doing a Google search in their cache files.....

'Bad guys in 3 vehicles set up mounted machine guns'

Mexican Army Humvee

Mexican soldiers and civilian smugglers engaged in an armed standoff with nearly 30 American law enforcement officials on the southern U.S. border, according to Texas police and the FBI.

At a spot more than 200 yards inside the U.S., Mexican Army troops set up several mounted machine guns when U.S. Border Patrol agents called for backup Monday, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario, Calif., reported.

The paper said Mexican military Humvees were towing what appeared to be thousands of pounds of marijuana across the border into the U.S., according to Chief Deputy Mike Doyal of the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department.

The incident took place on the Rio Grande near Neely's Crossing, about 50 miles east of El Paso.

"It's been so bred into everyone not to start an international incident with Mexico that it's been going on for years," Doyal told the Daily Bulletin. "When you're up against mounted machine guns, what can you do? Who wants to pull the trigger first? Certainly not us."

Confirming the afternoon encounter, FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons told the paper, "Bad guys in three vehicles ended up on the border. People with Humvees, who appeared to be with the Mexican Army, were involved with the three vehicles in getting them back across."

Deputies captured one vehicle and found 1,477 pounds of marijuana inside, according to Doyal, who added Mexican soldiers set fire to one of the Humvees stuck in the river.

Such incidents are common, Doyal told the Daily Bulletin. Last November, his deputies were called on to back up agents from the Fort Hancock border patrol station in Texas after confronting more than six fully armed men dressed in Mexican military uniforms.

Armed with machine guns, the men were trying to bring more than three tons of marijuana across the border in military vehicles.

Doyal insisted the federal government must do something about the incursions, pointing out the deputies and border agents are not equipped for combat.

But Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff today played down the reports of Mexican military incursions, suggesting many could have been mistakes or criminals dressed in military garb. Last week, Mexican officials denied their military made any incursions.

The Daily Bulletin reported, however, border agents interviewed over the past year believe the confrontations were with Mexican military personnel.

A story by the paper last year highlighted a Department of Homeland Security document reporting 216 incursions by Mexican soldiers during the previous 10 years.

Chertoff downplayed the reports at that time, as well, calling them "overblown."

But border agents contend otherwise.

"We're sitting ducks," said one who spoke to the Daily Bulletin on condition of anonymity. "The government has our hands tied."

As WND reported in February 2006, an American law enforcement officer and news crew in Hudspeth County, Texas, witnessed an armed incursion into the U.S. by men dressed in Mexican army attire, the second such incident in two weeks.

Mexican officials have said their military is forbidden from traveling within three miles of the border, though U.S. border residents repeatedly have spotted mobile patrols of Mexican military units traversing roads that run directly parallel to the international boundary. Mexico says the armed men crossing into the U.S. are paramilitary forces loyal to drug-smuggling cartels.

Republican Reps. Duncan Hunter and David Drier of California last week asked Chertoff, the House Judiciary Committee, the House Homeland Security Committee and the House International Relations Committee to investigate the incursions.

Israel Warns WWIII May Be Biblical War of Gog and Magog

Things are not looking good in the middle east or the rest of the world according to this article.

(IsraelNN.com) US President George W. Bush said a nuclear Iran would mean World War III. Israeli newscasts featured Gog & Magog maps of the likely alignment of nations in that potential conflict.

Channel 2 and Channel 10 TV showed the world map, sketching the basic alignment of the two opposing axes in a coming world war, in a manner evoking associations of the Gog and Magog prophecy for many viewers. The prophecy of Gog and Magog refers to a great world war centered on the Holy Land and Jerusalem and first appears in the book of Yechezkel (Ezekiel).

On one side were Israel, the United States, Britain, France and Germany. On the other were Iran, Russia, China, Syria and North Korea.

US President Bush said Wednesday during a press conference that Iran attaining nuclear weapons raises the risk of "World War III."

"If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it'd be a dangerous threat to world peace," Bush said. "So I told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested [in preventing a nuclear Iran]…I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Iran Tuesday and slammed the US’s refusal to rule out the use of force against Iran’s nuclear project. "Not only should we reject the use of force, but also the mention of force as a possibility," he said.

Russia has blocked tougher UN sanctions in the UN Security Council, where it has veto power. The Russian president asserts that there is no evidence Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons rather than a peaceful nuclear power program.

The rest of the story here

Hillary Ensnared in Bloggergate

This woman will stop at nothing to get what she wants even if it means breaking the law....


http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/hillary_blogger/2007/10/18/41954.html?s=al&promo_code=3BA7-1">From Here
Hillary Ensnared in Bloggergate

Thursday, October 18, 2007 10:41 AM


Call it "Bloggergate" — the subversion of the blogosphere by Democrat money.


To be more precise, Bloggergate is the subsidizing of left-wing bloggers with illegal Democrat campaign contributions, laundered through ostensibly “non-partisan” non-profit groups.

At a convention of left-wing bloggers last summer, Hillary Clinton announced, “We are . . . putting together a network in the blogosphere.”

Her remarks became public only three weeks ago, on Oct. 2, when an anonymous person posted a shaky, hand-held videotape of her speech on YouTube. In it, Hillary bragged that she had helped create “institutions” which had produced a left-wing “network in the blogosphere” capable of “matching” the alleged “advantage of the other side.”

Hillary’s claim raises troubling questions. On a practical level, just how exactly does a U.S. senator go about exerting her power to stack the blogosphere in her favor?

One obvious method is to buy favorable coverage. Hillary's boast carries a strong implication that she has subsidized bloggers.

The first evidence of Bloggergate emerged in January 2005 when the two most prominent left-wing bloggers on the Internet — Jerome “The Blogfather” Armstrong of MyDD and DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuñiga — both admitted to getting cash from Howard Dean's presidential campaign.

The scandal heated up in October 2006, when Republican blogger Michael B. Brodkorb of Minnesota, assailed by piranha-like swarms of leftist bloggers, revealed that his tormentors were on the take; that is, that they had been getting generous cash "fellowships" from an outfit called the Center for Independent Media (CIM). At that time, CIM was working from an office in Washington, DC owned by the Democrat front group Media Matters for America, Brodkorb discovered.

Curiously, it turns out that the co-founders of CIM, David S. Bennahum and Alexandra Savino, are both Media Matters alumni. Mr. Bennahum helped found Media Matters, serving as one of its original senior fellows. Miss Savino worked for Media Matters as a blogosphere analyst.

Clinton Claims

Now Bloggergate has spun into overdrive with Hillary Clinton's revelation, from her own lips, that she helped "start" and "support" Media Matters.

After all these years, can it be that we have finally identified the source of the Bloggergate money stream? Can it be that leaders of the leftwing blogosphere suck their nourishment directly from the swollen teat of Senator Clinton's pendulous fundraising apparatus?

Hillary made her admission at the Aug. 4, 2006 YearlyKos Convention in Chicago. Here is what she said on the now-infamous YouTube video: “I would wish that we had this active and fighting a blogosphere about 15 years ago, because we have certainly suffered over the last years from a real imbalance in the political world in our country, but we are righting that balance — or lefting that balance — I’m not sure which, and certainly are better prepared and more focused on taking our arguments and making them effective and disseminating them widely and really putting together a network in the blogosphere.

"In a lot of the new progressive infrastructure, institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress, we’re beginning to match what I had said for years was the advantage of the other side.”

In plain English, Hillary is saying that she "helped start and support" certain institutions tasked with correcting an alleged "imbalance" between right-wing and left-wing media. These institutions form a part of what Hillary calls "a new progressive infrastructure." According to Hillary, the "infrastructure" she "helped" build has given rise to a left-wing "network in the blogosphere" capable of "matching" the "advantage of the other side."

In this regard, she names two institutions specifically; Media Matters for America and the Center for American Progress.

My co-author David Horowitz and I described the peculiar relationship between these two groups in our book "The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party."

We noted that the Center for American Progress was founded in July 2003 by billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, working closely with Morton Halperin, director of U.S. advocacy for Soros’ Open Society Institute. The two men appointed former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta to be president and CEO of the Center, and brought in Harold Ickes — chief fundraiser and former deputy chief of staff for the Clinton White House — to help organize it.

Noting the heavy involvement of Clintonites with the Center for American Progress, leftist writer Robert Dreyfuss remarked in the March 1, 2004 edition of The Nation: "In looking at Podesta's center there's no escaping the imprint of the Clintons. It's not completely wrong to see it as a shadow government, a kind of Clinton White-House-in-exile — or a White House staff in readiness for President Hillary Clinton.”

Eerily foreshadowing her later comments on YouTube, Hillary told The Nation's Dreyfuss, "We've had the challenge of filling a void on our side of the ledger for a long time, while the other side created an infrastructure that has come to dominate political discourse. The Center is a welcome effort to fill that void."

In 2004, the Center for American Progress launched a new organization called Media Matters for America, headed by David Brock, a former conservative journalist who had turned to the left. The stated mission of Media Matters was to serve as a “watchdog” for conservative bias in media. The New York Times reported on May 3, 2004: "Mr. Brock's project was developed with help from the newly formed Center for American Progress . . . Podesta has loaned office space in the past to Mr. Brock and introduced him to potential donors.

“Mr. Brock . . . has also spoken with Senator Clinton, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota and former vice president Al Gore about his project . . .”

Push to Ban Rush

No sooner had Media Matters opened for business, than Brock began pressuring Congress to ban Rush Limbaugh from American Forces Radio and Television Service — an effort which continues to this day.

Much like a yeast colony, in which each bud of yeast sprouts new buds, which in turn sprout buds of their own, the Center for American Progress spawned Media Matters, which has now begun spawning offshoots of its own. One of these offshoots is the Center for Independent Media (CIM). Launched in April 2006, it initially worked from an office owned by Media Matters at 1625 Massachusetts Avenue N.W., 3rd Floor, Washington DC.

Through a system of media “fellowships," CIM recruits, trains, directs and finances a veritable army of leftwing bloggers, all subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer, thanks to the Center's 501(c)(3) tax-free status.

According to the Center’s “New Journalist” fellowship application, CIM offers bloggers a three-month, renewable fellowship which includes such perks as “a stipend of $4,500 to be paid over three months,” “editorial mentorship from experts in the field of blogging and/or journalism,” access to expensive databases such as LexisNexis, as well as free legal advice, training, and technical support.

Because CIM fellowships expire after three months, CIM "fellows" are always on the hot seat. If CIM is satisfied with the blogger's performance, it will renew his fellowship. Otherwise, it will not. Plainly, CIM bloggers have much to gain if they toe the party line — and much to lose if they fail to satisfy their benefactors.

CIM does not publish a full list of its bloggers. We can only speculate on their number. However, the CIM Web site does provide a "select" list of some of its more prominent "fellows."

Federal law prohibits national political candidates such as Hillary Clinton from using 501(c)3 tax-free, non-profit organizations such as the Center for American Progress, Media Matters for America and the Center for Independent Media as vehicles for campaign propaganda.

In this, as in so many other matters, Sen. Clinton has conducted herself as if she is above the law. And perhaps she is.

It remains to be seen whether the IRS and the Federal Election Commission will blow the whistle on Hillary’s army of paid bloggers. Who knows? They just might. But I'm not holding my breath.

KDFW Suspends Reporter after Controversial Ambush

This is an example of the media taking it too far. People have a right for their own self protection but this nut needs to be banned from the media from now on.

KDFW Suspends Rebecca Aguilar After Controversial "Ambush"

Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 03:30:29 PM

A few days after receiving a major award, KDFW-Channel 4's Rebecca Aguilar has been suspended from the Fox affiliate.

Monday night, KDFW-Channel 4 ran a piece about 70-year-old James Walton, owner of Able Walton Machine & Welding in West Dallas, who, early Sunday morning, shot and killed and man trying to break into his business. What made Walton's story so extraordinary was that it was the second time he'd killed an intruder in three weeks. As it happens, Walton also lives at his place of business.

But today you will not find the Fox4 story on the station's Web site; there's a page for it, but no accompanying video. (Update: It's available here.) That's because Rebecca Aguilar's piece elicited a torrent of outrage, both on local blogs (chiefly FrontBurner but also elsewhere) and from viewers who began deluging the station with angry calls Monday night and much of the day yesterday. As Trey Garrison pointed out on D's blog:

This is her idea of journalism? Ambushing a 70-year-old man who has been through life-and-death twice in three weeks? "Are you a trigger happy kind of person? Is that what what you wanted to do? Shoot to kill?" Good Lord, I hate the people in this field.

Well, Trey need not worry about Aguilar, at least for a while: Unfair Park has confirmed that Aguilar -- who was just named one of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' Broadcast Journalists of the Year -- has been indefinitely suspended, based on concerns about how Aguilar treated Walton. She could not be reached for comment, but Unfair Park did leave Aguilar a message on her cell phone. (When we tried her number in the newsroom, another woman answered and said, "Rebecca isn't available today.") We also left a message for Maria Barrs, the station's news director. --Robert Wilonsky

Cherokee Legend

There's a message in this Cherokee Legend and I wanted to share it with you.


Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth's rite of passage?

His father takes him into the forest,blindfolds him and leaves him alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. He cannot cry out for help to anyone. Once he survives the night, he is a MAN.

He cannot tell the other boys of this experience,because each lad must come into manhood on his own.

The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him.

Maybe even some human might do him harm. The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could become a man!

Finally, after a horrific night the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold. It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him. He had been at watch the entire night,protecting his son from harm.

We too, are never alone. Even when we don't know it,our Heavenly Father is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us. When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him.

If you liked this story, pass it on. If not, you took off your blindfold before dawn...

This one speaks for itself

Excitement in my neck of the woods!

We went to the funeral home Wednesday night for a friend of ours that died Monday of a massive heart attack. On the way back home just as we crossed over an Interstate bridge, there was a roadblock set up and we were checked before passing through. There was about 12 to 15 sheriff deputies cars at that roadblock. The local TV station was just setting up their live broadcast van there also. The deputy that checked us told us that a prisoner had managed to escape from a U.S. Marshall on the Interstate and said that he was a bad dude. We drove on about a half mile until we got to the U.S. highway and there was another roadblock there, about 15 to 20 sheriff car, state troopers, federal marshall's and some local police. We were checked there again and had to open the trunk to make sure we didn't have any uninvited riders back there. We then headed north on that highway to the side road we take to go home and another roadblock was set up there also, about 10 to 12 sheriff cars, state troopers and local police. We had to be checked again and had to open the trunk there also to make sure no one was back there.

It was a very exciting night and I made sure that I listened to my dogs when they barked that night.

Anyway, the next morning I heard on the radio news that he had been caught about 1 am Thursday morning. It seems that he had escaped from prison back in September and had stolen two different cars around the area. A U.S. Marshall had spotted him driving north on the Interstate about 4:30PM Wednesday and tried to stop him and the escapee wrecked trying to get away. So, all is well now and the escapee is back in prison finishing out his life term. They sure need to make sure he doesn't get out again.

Veteran Rescues Flag

A Mexican business owner in Reno, NV who says he is supposedly an American citizen flew the Mexican flag over Old Glory at his business. That is, until a veteran came to his business and cut both flags off the flagpole, in front of the Mexican, and kept old glory, an act he said was rescuing the American flag. The irony is that the vet rescued the flag with an engraved K-bar knife. The Mexican showed that he had at least a grain of common sense when he only stood and watched without a word as the vet took down the flags, left the Mexican rag on the ground, spoke to the news cameras explaining his action and identifying himself, and walked away.