Pitchers day in baseball---fred Kelly grant

I’m thinking that April 30 must be a special day for pitchers in baseball.   Look at the no-hitters tossed on this date:

               1910  Addie Jones of Indians

               1922   Charles Robertson of White Sox

               1940    Tex Carleton   of Brooklyn Dodgers

               1946    Bob Feller (his 2^nd) of Cleveland Indians

               1967    Steve Barber and Stu Miller  of Orioles

               1969    Jim Maloney (his 3^rd) of Cincinnati Reds

The only one I saw was the 1967 game pitched by Steve Barber, left hander, and Stu Miller, right hander for the Baltimore Orioles.  Interesting thing about the game was that the Orioles lost to the Detroit Tigers 2-1.  Both Barber and Miller were wild, and walks led to the two runs.  Orioles couldn’t hit to save their lives.  Barber pitched some superb games that year and lost because the hitters just didn’t show up when he pitched.  Dave McNally was the lucky pitcher for the Orioles, they nearly all hit when he pitched.

Closest thing to this game in interesting low hit category was game pitched by Floyd Bevin for New York Yankees in world series where he lost the game because of wildness, but pitched a one hitter.

But, of course, even on a pitcher’s date, some hitters made a headline:  willy mays hit 4 homeruns in a game; Ted Williams became a 1,000 hit man.

And, not all the pitchers who made the news on this date made it in a good way.  David Cone of the Mets got furious with an umpire over a call at first base and while he argued with the ball in his hands, two opposing runners scored.

Baseball----always good for a story, and a laugh.

CONNECTICUT POLICE CAPTAIN BECOMES TEACHER---NOW TEACHER OF THE YEAR, RECEIVES AWARD FROM PRESIDENT OBAMA IN ROSE GARDEN---------Fred Kelly Grant   April 29, 2009

 

A New York City police officer, who worked his way up to the rank of Captain while pursuing a University degree in education, has now been named National Teacher of the Year.  On the evening before his 100^th day as President, Barack Obama, presented the award yesterday in the White House Rose Garden to Anthony Mullen.  The teacher retired from the police department to enter the teaching profession. 

Interviewed this morning on CNN, Mullen said “as an officer I got to kids too late to help in many cases.  I thought as a teacher I wouldn’t have to be ‘reactive’, that I could help before it became too late.”   He teaches “special interest” students who have had trouble in the “criminal justice system” and who are troubled in other ways.

My congratulations to “Captain” Mullen, now “Teacher” Mullen, for seeing the wisdom to move from the dysfunctional criminal justice system to the functional education system.

Anyone who tries to help in the criminal justice system faces one of many obstacles:  1.  Help by an officer may be wiped out by an uncaring, sightless judge; 2.  Help by an officer may create some hope which is wiped out by the first assaultive night in jail; 3. Help by an officer is often resented by the callous, uncaring others in the system who handle the youth after the officer hands him over, and the youth is then hassled and abused throughout the rest of his time in the system; 4.  Help by the officer may be wiped out by a stupid, uncaring attorney who could not care less about the youth’s future; 5. Help by the officer can be ruined and rendered useless by an uncaring, overworked probation or parole officer.

In the school system, where Mullen can deal with a youth day after day and can reinforce the positive things that develop, he can do so much more for troubled youth.   My congratulations go to him for having the wisdom, and the confidence, and the courage to move from the streets into the class rooms.(click links below)http://www.necn.com/Boston/New-England/2009/04/28/Obama-honors-Teacher-of-the/1240952016.html

http://www.theledger.com/article/20090428/NEWS/904285027/1410

PATRICK DORINSON: Obama’s Next 1360 Days Are More Important Than the First 100

THE FOURTH WAVE
by Ken Freeman

I recently read about a ten-year old girl from England who saved over a hundred lives from the tsunami in Indonesia. She and her mother were walking on the beach, when suddenly the ocean pulled back exposing a wide expanse of sand.

"It’s a tsunami," this ten-year-old child told her mother. "We studied about this in school. First the water pulls way back and then the big wave comes and kills everybody."

Her mother looked at the ocean being drawn back so suddenly and believed what her daughter had said was true. They started the alert. Running along the shore they screamed at people to get off the beach, that a big wave was coming. Some people understood and fled to higher ground. Most...did not.

Then the giant waves came to sweep the unbelievers away. There were four waves, each one worse than the last.

Later this English mother said that the thing that haunted her dreams was the image of a lovely young mother who had been playing with her little daughter in a tidal pool. When they warned her, "Run, there is a big wave coming." She smiled sweetly at them and said, "Oh, thanks, we’ll keep an eye out for it."

As those who were to survive ran for higher ground, they looked back to see the young mother kneel down beside her child to study a seashell on the sand. She and her daughter were never seen again.

---

THERE IS ANOTHER TSUNAMI COMING. It has been gaining momentum for many years now. It has gathered strength behind the tranquil beauty of a dream-like world known as "how we wish things could be." It has sucked the energy from our land, pulled back and gathered height. Soon it will come crashing down upon us. But our people are so comfortable and so secure in their own small world that they do not heed the warnings.

Those of us who are awake have tried to tell them. We have offered massive amounts of evidence. We have presented fact after fact. We have pointed out the destruction already wreaked in other places and even on other Americans. But so far, our people have not listened. They think it can’t happen to us here. Not here in America.

This monstrous wave of destruction has already engulfed Western Europe and captured its people, depriving them of freedom and even the memory of what freedom truly means. It has taken their land and their values. It has murdered their unborn children and caused them to abandon their elderly. It has taken all this and offered only the security of enslavement. It has done all these things in the name of good, in the name of humanity, in the name of saving the planet for future generations. It is a huge vile lie curling back upon itself. This fourth wave is now ready to scourge the earth and sweep everything we cherish from its path. Today, its true name is spoken only in whispers but our fathers knew it well as Socialism and Communism.

The first wave is already washing over our land. It is deceptively cloaked in benign titles like sustainability, smart growth, environmentalism or global governance. It quietly surrounds us. Its favorite color is United Nations Blue. Its Storm Troopers will be called Peace Keepers. Behind whatever name it lurks, it seeks the death of freedom and the death of Christian values. Its motto is, "There shall be no God but government."

We cannot outrun these waves, for there is nowhere left to run. America is the last island of freedom in a world awash in totalitarianism and tyranny. But there is still hope. If we will only stand and fight, this rising tide of deceptive words, of socialistic ideology and of centralized power can be defeated. We must take heart in the sure and certain knowledge that the U.S. Constitution guarantees our liberties, guarantees our God given unalienable rights and that these rights descend directly to, and reside in, the individual citizen and not in government. Therefore, government cannot take them away. They can only be lost by ignorance and neglect. This knowledge must be the high ground on which we make our stand, courage must be our shield and an informed electorate our army.

America, you are prosperous. You are free. You bath in the sunlight of your Forefathers sacrifices. For years now, you have slumbered in ignorance while a few of us fought on. But freedom is not free. Can’t you sense this danger in your soul? Don’t you feel the earth trembling beneath your feet; or is it that you are just too afraid to awaken and look up? When you finally do, will it be too late?

When you hear that the end of liberty is rapidly approaching will you stand and fight for your freedom or will you smile sheepishly and say, "Oh, thanks for the information, we’ll keep an eye out for it?"

Kenneth L. Freeman
Chairman, The Alliance For Citizens Rights (ACR)

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." (Edmund Burke)

Communications strategist specializing in political communications and government relations.

Thu, April 23rd, 2009

While almost every politician in America was stumbling all over themselves to be photographed with a shovel or some other tool of manual labor on Earth Day, a California company announced that after 65 years it was closing its doors effective immediately.

Gregg Industries is a foundry in El Monte and it has been in operation since 1944 when California was a critical player in FDR’s “arsenal of democracy”. They didn’t make planes or tanks. But they made some of the critical engine pieces that drove tanks in war and the bulldozers and heavy equipment that built postwar California.

They were due to close on April 30, but decided to close today, a week early.

Why? What was the rush?

Enter the Environmental Storm Troopers of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD).

This is from a press release from Gregg Industries parent, Neenah Foundry Company:

“At this point, we feel like SCAQMD is literally running Gregg out of California and our employees out of their jobs,” said Bob Ostendorf, President and CEO of Neenah Foundry Company, Gregg’s parent company. “We’d rather cease foundry operations early than risk SCAQMD inspectors inciting workers who already feel worried about Gregg’s closure and the loss of their jobs. Neenah and its affiliates operate in four other states and I have never seen any government agency behave like SCAQMD,” Ostendorf said.

These bureaucratic bullies have been harassing Gregg Industries despite the company agreeing last October to invest $5 million in new processes to reduce the manufacturing odors that had been the source of some complaint.

Do you think that mattered to the SCAQMD? Hell no! They just kept on showing up unannounced for inspections, abusing staff and demanding entrance to the facility without escort and without wearing protective equipment. (Wait till CALOSHA hears about this!)

They even threatened force to push past a lone security guard on Good Friday when the plant was closed.

The company had intended to keep open a machine shop that employed 75 people but have since said they would rethink those plans. 75 people will lose these high skilled high paying jobs and will join others in the unemployment lines because the desk sitters and environmental Luddites at the SCAQMD said so.

And here’s the kicker.

They were also making some of the very green turbo diesel parts that would have helped California truckers meet the new emissions standards set by the state in accordance with Arnold’s favorite bill, AB 32!

And speaking of the Governor, where is he and his vaunted economic team that is supposed to help keep jobs in California? How about it David Crane? Where was the California Commission on Jobs and Economic Growth? Where was the Legislature? Probably too busy holding meaningless hearings on nanny state laws and passing even more stringent environmental legislation that sacrifice California businesses on the green altar of environmental purity.

Let’s see, press conferences and gala events for Tesla electric cars that no one can afford at $109,000, but a silent, swift kick out the door for Gregg Industries who was actually producing something that works and helps the environment.

Someone needs to stand up to these zealots of the SCAQMD and none too soon lest they continue to drive away California businesses and jobs at an alarming rate.

How about it Governor?

But somehow I think that the coastal environmental elitists snug in their compounds in Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the San Francisco Bay Area sipping on Chardonnay and eating vegan could care less about how some hard working blue collar workers in El Monte will put food on the table now that their jobs have vanished.

For the workers at Gregg Industries, Earth Day 2009 will always be remembered as the day they were told that after 65 years of building California, they were no longer needed.

PATRICK DORINSON: ‘Only a Buzzard Feeds on His Friends’ and Ten Other Tips For Republicans From the Cowboys

The "Green Fields" of "Governance" or the "Scorched Earth" of "Socialism"

The global society is experiencing the repercussions from the first tidal wave associated with the "wrenching transformation^{1" referenced by Al Gore in his book, "Earth in the Balance".}

This initial destructive wave (financial in nature) is due to the commitment by the majority of the governments of the world to provide a house for every form of family unit.2 Thus, this commitment, from the United Nations 1995 Habitat II Conference would be listed as priority one3 in the June 2001 "United States – Habitat II" Progress Report. Referencing this ill-fated policy the report states:

"…the role of the secondary-market government sponsored enterprises (GSEs)—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…. over the next 10 years the GSEs will purchase $2.4 trillion in mortgages for 28 million low- and moderate-income families, an increase of almost $500 billion over the earlier goal."

Global financial institutions following governmental policy created MBS (Mortgage Backed Securities). The worth of the MBS would soon equal the cost of the ink and paper used to create the so-called financial instrument. The rest of the story regarding government policy number "one" priority is replete with intrigue, fraud, mayhem, and, of course, financial ruin. Political officials assume their typical position of finger pointing and desk pounding. The resulting amount of justice dispensed is equal to the value of the MBS.

A Look Ahead – "Governance" - item 53a on the government’s implementation list.

Scott Fosler, former board member of the Alliance for Regional Stewardship, acting as moderator during the 2003 National Stewardship Forum, stated:

"The challenge remains to locate vocabulary that expresses what we want to say without threatening or turning off important potential stewards and constituents."4

Mr. Fosler would likely discourage the use of the word "duped". Nonetheless, "duped" is most applicable in explaining the deceptive course in the implementation of the three legs of "Sustainable Development"5 – "social, economic" and "environmental".6

Example:

During the November 4th, 2008 Marshall County, Alabama Work Session, Commission Chairman Doug Fleming led the discussion on the prime topic of the meeting - the County Commission’s intent to expose supposed falsehoods printed in Marshall County Citizen for Property Rights (CPR) flyer. The CPR formed to protect property rights after the County adopted a draconian ordinance designed to implement Alabama’s "Limited Self-Governance" act. The flyer quoted an appropriately descriptive

1

definition of "Governance" which was printed in the United Nations 1999 Human Development Report.

"Governance is not government – it is the framework of rules, institutions and practices that set limits on the behavior of individuals, organizations and companies," page 34.

Ultimately, Chairman Fleming acknowledged the CPR’s right to utilize the appropriate definition.

Following Chairman Fleming’s acknowledgement, Commissioner Strickland displayed a desired to ridicule the assertion that an Alabama statute could conceivably be associated with a global program.

Duped! - To view the video of this prime example click on the following link: http://tinyurl.com/5rr62c

The implementation of "governance" is not limited to legislative action. The "wrenching transformation" i.e. "globalization" involves more than governmental authority. As such, this "governance" system designed to implement and enforce "sustainable development principles"^{7 require a "framework of rules, institutions and practices" designed to "limit" "behavior". In order to be successful this system appropriately described by the United Nations 1999 Human Development Report includes additional forays into the structure of society.}

Example – Since 1997, Region 2020, a purported civic organization has led the efforts for "regional cooperation"8 in 12 central counties of Central Alabama. Under the heading of "STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT & SERVICES" Region 2020 clarifies "regional cooperation" - "to develop a region that achieves regional governance with Home Rule."9 Joining in the call for "governance" are the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham and the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce. Larry Watts, Executive Director of the "Regional Planning Commission," stated that their combined effort was to create "regional governance" not "regional government."10

Their longstanding effort to "limit behavior" through "regional governance" has resulted in the creation of the "Regional Growth Alliance. (RGA)".11 The RGA was presented in 2003 with the "First-Ever Regional Stewardship Award". In the 2003 the Alliance for Regional Stewardship recognized the efforts of a total of four12 programs across the country designed to "limit behavior".

In 2006 the Alliance for Regional Stewardship held the "Regional Stewardship & Collaborative Governance Implementation That Produces Results" forum. The Alliance forum publication13 acknowledges exemplary examples of "regional

2

governance" and provides additional information regarding various forms of "behavior limiting" "governance".

"There are several ways to characterize the relationship between governance and government."

1. �� "Governance is the use of government authority to set the rules for interaction among private individuals and organizations."

2. �� "Governance as the processes that set the purposes of government and decide which purposes will be embraced as public problems that government will try to solve (governance as politics)."14

Expanding the scope of "governance" the Alliance for Regional Stewardship states that:

"Regional Collaborative Governance" is, – "about how regional stewards find practical ways to solve problems by transcending traditional jurisdictions, sectors, and issues, and creating a new framework for collaborative action."15

"Regional Collaboratives" – "…are run by practitioner-professionals who are skilled in the art of effectively blending government, business and nonprofit resources. They create goals for the region, and then design strategies that implement collective, effective, measurable results."15a Emphasis added.

"Regional steward" - "Regional stewards include local elected or appointed officials, university or college leaders, executives of local businesses, foundation executives, non-profit leaders and community activists. What they all have in common is the realization that to accom-plish their goals they need to work collaboratively with people in other jurisdictions and sectors."16 Emphasis added.

"Collaborative governance is a practical process, led by regional stewards, to reinvent how our nation solves its problems, how it reweaves the fabric of American society region-by-region."17 Emphasis added.

Reflecting on Scott Fosler’s quote:

"The challenge remains to locate vocabulary that expresses what we want to say without threatening or turning off important potential stewards and constituents."

3

"Reweaving the fabric of society" does somehow sound more acceptable than Al Gore’s "wrenching transformation". Of course "Sherman’s march through Georgia" is a nice way of referring to a "scorched earth policy".

By Don Casey

APRIL 19--A MOST MEMORABLE DAY, WHAT IT MEANS TO ME--Fred Kelly Grant

Two significant American tragedies occurred on this date.  Domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh murdered 168 people when he blew up the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, on the second anniversary of the horrible end of a botched law enfocement  siege of the David Koresh led Branch Davidians at their Mount Carmel division.  85 Davidians, including children,  and 4 federal agents died needlessly during  the assaults approved by Janet  Reno who was Bill Clinton’s attorney general.

But, the lasting story of the day is that on this date in history,1775, the new nation of America emerged at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, where volunteer soldiers unified for independence.  A severely outnumbered troop of those volunteers carried the field on that day, sending King George’s “redcoats” scurrying back to Boston.

 

Timothy McVeigh Blows Up Federal Building in Oklahoma City

On this day in 1995, Timothy McVeigh, the most destructive domestic terrorist in our history, blew up the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.  168 people were murdered, including 15 children who were in a day care center for employees in the building.

McVeigh had prepared for his destructive, cold-blooded murders for years.  He had travelled the land, visiting with militants who preached that the Government had to be stopped, even if it meant “taking down” officials.  He travelled from one gun show to another, searching for the core of the army that he thought would come forward from the shadows to “take back” the country.

He served as body guard temporarily for a talk show host who called on someone to “take down” the top officials in the Government.  A few days after the broadcast, one of his listeners fired 50 rounds at the White House.  McVeigh continued his quest for the army that he could join.

He focused on the Ruby Ridge siege and the Waco disaster as examples of how our Government had gone awry.  While he was right that both Ruby Ridge and Waco demonstrated a Government whose “law enforcement” agents are less than qualified, less than organized for and trained for such siege situations, the answer to that problem is not to blow up a nine floor office building of no importance to the offending agents at Ruby Ridge and Waco.

McVeigh’s actions were not preventable.  Others had specifically planned to blow up the Murrah Building, in fact The Order had planned to blow the building up, but its leaders were arrested two days before the bombing was to take place.  300 agents raided The Order’s center, made its arrests and never learned a thing about the planned bombing.

Why this building? Because it was a 9 story federal building, where massive destruction and loss of life could occur.  It was a building in the heartland of America, where such destruction would get the maximum attention, and hopefully bring forward to combat all the shadow warriors which the ultra-right wing terrorists were sure existed.

Many times, I have said that if the Arab terrorists had understood anything about America, and particularly New York, they would not have flown the planes into the World Trade Center.  New Yorkers will survive!  They will survive anything, and will do what is necessary to get through the crisis and move on with life.!!  Almost always they have a leader who can rise to the occasion as Julianni did on and after September 11.  As the brutal truth about the terrorist attack of that day became evident, Julianni and his top advisers and the top officials in the police and fire departments in New York were where?  They were in the thick of danger at Ground Zero, and at command posts which were instantly set in place.  While the federal government structure had the President of the United States flying around in Airforce One, trying to decide what to do, New Yorkers were already digging out.

The home-grown terrorists who influenced McVeigh knew all this.  So, the concentrated on heartland USA.

The bomb that McVeigh left in the Ryder truck at the front of the Murrah building carried the intensity of three tons of dynamite.  Every building within 16 blocks of the target building suffered damage from the explosion.  The 250 ton rear axle of the truck was blown over a quarter of a mile away.

And, how did our Government react?  As soon as they arrested McVeigh, they began searching for---and wasting time and money---accomplices, believing that McVeigh could not have acted alone.  They identified for search warrant and news releases the people sought as J.Doe #2 and J.Doe #3.    As one writer has pointed out, they should have identified them as J.Doe 2 through 20,000.  They were wrong about McVeigh’s actions, but they didn’t even have a clue as to all the people who had influenced him in his quest for revenge on a Government that he considered rogue.  They wasted time and money on trying to identify persons or offices in the Murrah Building with whom he had grievances.  He had none against the people in the building.  They were simply to be casualties of war.  He was striking the Government in a way that would shake loose his comrades into a strike force.

An informative link is available for details as to the bombing, as well as specifics in the preparation of McVeigh for his rendezvous with destiny.  See www.albionmonitor.com/01056/mcveigh.html.  In fact, our Jon should add www.albion monitor.com as a favorite link because it appears that each day very informative historical data for the day is featured.  The McVeigh article contains material emanating from the authors of American Terrorist who interviewed McVeigh in prison.

 

WACO DISASTER IN 1993, 81 MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN DIE AS ILL ADVISED AND NEGLIGENTLY CARRIED OUT SIEGE OF BRANCH DIVIDIAN OUTSIDE WACO SETS FIRE TO BUILDING, BURNING PEOPLE INSIDE TO DEATH.

One of the events that pushed McVeigh toward the Murrah Building was the ill conceived and negligently carried out siege of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.  Exactly two years prior to the bombing, the negligence of the federal agents resulted in the fire of the building which housed the Davidians---and 85 people died. 17 of the 85 were children under the age of 12!!  A proud day in the history of the Department of Justice, FBI and Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms!!

Agents had sought to arrest David Koresh on gun charges, and sought to gain evidence as to the minor children inside the compound at Mount Carmel, outside Waco, believing apparently that he was having sexual relations with minors.

They could have arrested Koresh at any time prior to his becoming aware of the desire for his arrest.  They could have secured the information as to people inside the compound, at any time as the members of the group were in town getting supplies.

Instead, the agents staged a raid on February 28, 1993.  ATTF agents stormed the compound in one of the worst strategic efforts imaginable.  As they parade of law enforcement cars trailed off toward the compound, delivery and other service providers saw and reported the vehicles headed for the headquarters on the ranch.  So, instead of the raid being a surprise, Koresh and his followers had time to hunker down and in.  During the raid,4 agents died and 5 Davidians died.  None need have died had an arrest been made prior to the raid,on the streets of town.

Koresh was wounded,and he began to negotiate terms for his surrender.  He gained some time when he told the FBI he needed to finish some religious documents and then would surrender.  The FBI took over the siege as soon as the initial raid was so tragically unsuccessful.

The FBI treated the situation as a “hostage” situation, not a siege by lawmen.  They held firm on plans to storm the building at some point, focusing on a contention that Koresh was holding the women and children as hostages.  They continued in this hostage mode, even though the Davidians sent out a 2 hour video tape showing adults and teenagers explaining articulately the reasons they wanted to stay with Koresh.

Finally, after 51 days of siege, Attorney General Janet Reno gave the orders approving a final assault to forcibly bring the Davidians out of the compound.  In the course of that assault, in which tear gas canisters were fired toward the building, a fire broke out which claimed the lives of 80 persons including the kids.  A federal “study commission” cleared the federal agents of the fire, and alleged that the Davidians deliberately set the fire from inside the building.  Such allegation has been disputed by members of the press, some of whom had been invited in by Koresh to interview his followers.  But, more important than press statements are the inconsistencies between the allegation and the facts.  At least two documentaries have been produced, and from each independent law enforcement authorities have concluded that the fire was caused by the firing of the gas canisters.

This wasn’t the first of Janet Reno’s blunders.  She was also involved in the Ruby Ridge fiasco which preceded Waco.  And, she was also involved in the legal shenanigans over preventing the father of a young Cuban boy from returning him to the island of Castro.  She may well have been the worst Attorney General in the history of the nation;she certainly had not distinguished herself in the office of US Attorney prior to being appointed by President Clinton.

More specifics on Koresh who perished in the fire on this date, and on the siege and raid can be found at http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/david koresh/the-raid-&-siege.html. 

 

THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD STARTED THE FIREWORKS OF OUR REVOLUTION ON THIS DATE IN 1775.

The Royal Governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage was ordered by King George III to suppress the rebellious colonials who were threatening forcible insurrection and had already rebelled politically.

On April 18, General Gage dispatched 700 British troops (the “redcoats” under Lt. Colonel Francis Smith and Marine Major John Pitcairn to seize the Americans’ military stores at Concord, twenty miles west of Boston.

Through a carefully planned system of alerts involving placement of lanterns in the tower of Christ Church in Boston, the Americans had prepared Paul Revere and two others to race through the countryside on horseback to alert the volunteer American militia that the British were coming and how they were coming.

The famous warning ride has been immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”.  Stewards of the Range offers a book on Paul Revere which is a fun read, and very informative as to little known facts about the man and his famous ride to “spread the alarm through every Middlesex, village and farm, For the country folk to be up and to arm.”  (from Longfellow’s poem).

Actually, one of the two riders helping Revere was the only one of the three to complete his ride of warning, but warning was delivered.   On April 19, 1775, a group of 70 Minutemen led by John Parker engaged the British at Lexington Green (the colonial militia known as the Minute Men took the name because they would have to assemble at a Minute’s notice when necessary to defend the “new nation” that was forming.)

At Concord’s North Bridge, 300 to 400 hundred colonials engaged the British in a spirited battle, and the British were defeated and forced to retreat to Boston.  The American Revolution had commenced. 

The battle of Concord was historically immortalized by famous American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson in his “Concord Hymn”:

            By the rude bridge that arched the flood

            Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled

            Here once the embattled farmers stood

            And fired the shot heard round the world.

The greatest nation in the history of the world was born, in the unity, courage, and steadfastness of the less experienced, poorly supplied, less militarily organized militia men who turned back the British on April 19, 1775 at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.

Through the next few months, often the better organized British, operating in traditional military fashion, were done in by what may have been the first example of guerilla warfare carried on by the resourceful Americans.

The Great Republic which was born at Lexington and Concord has survived the Ruby Ridge, Waco and Murrah disasters, and will continue to survive.  It will be a long struggle to recover from the international agreements made by George Bush (Bush I)and Bill Clinton, and the North American Trade Union and NAFTA Superhighway agreements made by George Bush (Bush II) which minimized our sovereignty more than at any time since April 19,1775, when the brave Americans took on a superior force and won.

APRIL    18-----EVENTS IN HISTORY IMPORTANT TO ME, THE BIRTHDAY OF CLARENCE DARROW, THE MOST FAMOUS AMERICAN TRIAL LAWYER----Fred Kelly Grant

 

In  1857 on this date, the great, incomparable Clarence Darrow was born.     My idol,  even though he died when I was only two years of age, in 1938, very likely I would not have become a lawyer except for him.   Between high school and college I read Attorney for the Damned, a collection of his finest arguments to courts and juries.  My wife, Lodice gave me the book for Christmas, I’m sure as a nudge toward becoming a lawyer as she wanted.  It worked. 

He was a master of the language. Reporters said that when he finished his summation TO THE COURT in the Loeb Leopold trial in Chicago, the JUDGE WAS SHEDDING TEARS.

He started his career in Chicago, as did I.  He started as a lawyer in a corporate firm, as did I.  He “crossed the tracks”, leaving corporate work for the criminal court room, as did I.  He was not noted as being a good businessman, doing much work for little if any fee, as did I.

When in the corporate practice, he represented railroad companies.  When he switched it was to represent Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the American Railway Union, a man most hated by the corporate railroad world.  He represented the railroad at the time the Pullman Strike of 1894 began, and then on an act of conscience, resigned to represent the foe of the railroad.   As a result, he sacrificed a tremendous fee.

In 1905, he defended William Haywood, a radical leader of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Western Federation of Miners.  Haywood was charged with the assassination of the former governor of Idaho, who had become an enemy of the unions  during his term in office.  The governor was killed by a bomb which detonated when he opened his front yard gate in Caldwell where he had retired after leaving office.  Darrow won, and Haywood was acquitted.

He then defended the MacNamara Brothers who were charged with dynamiting the Los Angeles Times during a bitter fight over establishment of an open shop where union membership would not be required.

After this trial, he turned from defending labor union leaders to cases in which he opposed the death penalty, and often moved jurors and judges to tears through his eloquence, an eloquence belied by his rumpled, disheveled appearance.  In 1924 he defended Leopold and Loeb who were charged with the kidnapping and murder of young Bobby Franks in Chicago.  He saved them from the death penalty with a moving argument aimed at the severity of the state putting human beings to death deliberately through execution.

The next year, 1925, he defended Dr. Ossian Sweet, an Afro American who shot a member of a white mob which gathered outside his home in Detroit to force him to move from an all white neighborhood.  In a racially charged setting, with an all white jury,  Darrow gave a passionate 8 hour summary to the jury, and to the surprise and anger of the whites in the city, won a not guilty verdict.

In the same year, he defended John Scopes, a teacher charged criminally for teaching the Darwin theory of evolution.  Once he completed his famous defense, he retired, returning to the practice occasionally, most notably in the Massie trial in Hawaii in 1934.  Having lost everything during the first years of the depression, Darrow took on one of his most difficult trials for $40,000.     The mother of an alleged rape victim in Hawaii, was charged with hiring several men, including Massie, to kill an Hawaiian nature, one of the alleged rapists.

The trial was held in a heavily charged racial setting, where the jury was under extreme pressure to acquit the white defendants.  But, they found the defendants guilty of manslaughter.  The city was so enraged at the conviction, that martial law was considered, until finally the judge sentenced the defendants to ONE HOUR in jail.  When released they and Darrow left on the first ship off the island.

The movie Inherit the Wind, starring Spencer Tracy as Darrow, defending Scopes in the “Monkey Trial”, became one of the most memorable tributes to Darrow’s brilliance.  Lodice and I were given tickets to attend the preview of the movie in Chicago, as members of a group of reviewers whose remarks were then reported in the Chicago Tribune.  Source of the tickets?   Professor Philip Kurland, my constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago school of Law. Kurland was a renowned expert in constitutional law, called upon to argue several cases before the United States Supreme Court, who later would serve as personal counsel to Sam Erwin, chair of the Watergate Committee which lead to the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon.  Would like to say that Kurland gave the tickets to me, one of his favorite students.  But, alas he gave them to Lodice as appreciation for her cooperation with him in his preparation and marketing  of The Supreme Court Review.   She was secretary to the sales manager at the University of Chicago Press, and the only person on the staff Kurland would turn to for assistance.

Admittedly, reading Attorney for the Damned helped convince me to turn to the law.

PATRICK DORINSON: Live From a Tea Party — Up Close and Personal in Sacramento

IN CONGRESS THINGS GET ‘CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER’; AND THE CHESHIRE CAT’S RESPONSE ‘WE’RE ALL MAD HERE’ SEEMS TO HOLD TRUE.

If one were to undertake to guide a tour of young people through the Congress of the United States today, he/she should start with a reuniting with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  Chapter 1 of that great work of literature is focused on “down the rabbit hole”.  And, that may well explain the first step of any tour of the august bodies of lawmakers.  Down the rabbit hole to view actions that get “curiouser and curiouser”,and lead the Cheshire Cat to remark “We’re All  Mad Here”.

Maybe the first stop will be at the office Senator Feingold of Wisconsin.   He won applause from around the nation for voting against the Public Lands Bill which actually combined nearly 200 bills dealing with the public lands of the nation.  He was praised because he opposed the commitment of tax dollars included in the Bill, and because he opposed the so-called “giveaway of public lands”.  The idea of the “giveaway” was that the public lands put into wilderness by the various bills included in the Package removed the public from the lands,and removed the lands from potential  production.

I’ll put aside for a while the accuracy of those criticisms, but for now let it suffice to say that the characterization is not entirely true, and in some bills not true at all.

But, lets move on to look at another legislative endeavor of the good Senator.  He opposes spending money on the public lands and on giving away the public lands into wilderness----and at the same time SPONSORS a bill which can deprive every farmer, rancher, rural landowner and city dweller who irrigates a lawn, of his or her right to own and use private property.

Yes, this bill is one of those that attacks rural landowners in a disastrous way; but also includes within its circle of peril every urban landowner of industrial, commercial, or residential property.

Consider Feingold’s sponsorship of the Waters of the United States Act, a bill which is intended to upgrade and refine the Clean Water Act.  Sounds innocuous enough, right?

Well, lets consider the bill and its purpose.   The United States Corps of Engineers is charged with implementation of the Clean Water Act, and in carrying out that duty the Corps has wrought destruction on landowners all over the nation.  Its control of land owners and their attempts to better their land value and use by rehabbing wet spots which prohibit agricultural improvements or development, has cost land owners fortunes in money, time, and loss of land use.

The Clean Water Act claims jurisdiction over all the navigable waters of the United States.  When the Act was passed, no real ground swell of opposition resulted because traditionally the federal government had jurisdiction over the navigable waters.  One of the first considerations of the Founders was that states should not be able to interfere with commerce on the navigable waters, that is, those waters on which ships and boats could navigate in interstate or international commerce. Again, traditionally, the term applied to rivers, streams, lakes and oceans---bodies of water upon which boats or ships can be navigated in commerce.

But, the Corps was not satisfied with such a limitation on its jurisdiction.  It was not interested just in control over navigable waters; it wanted the power to expand to include any spot on land on which water sat or settled, or any spot on land where water EVER sat or settled.  It sought to extend its jurisdiction to ditches, ponds, streams “adjacent to” navigable waters, connected to them only by the slightest hydrologic connection.

In April 1980, John Rapanos owned 54 acres of land in Michigan.  The land sometimes had saturated soil conditions, but the nearest navigable water was more than 11 miles away!   He backfilled some of the saturated spots so that he could develop the land.  Clearly, this land did not fall within traditional definitions of “navigable waters”.  But, the Corps advised Rapanos that he could not backfill the land without a permit.  He resisted what seemed to be an incredible spread of federal jurisdiction over matters that should have been left to the states under the Tenth Amendment.

Rapanos went through twelve years of jaw-breakingly costly litigation before winning at the Supreme Court of the United States.  In Rapanos v. United States, 541 U.S.                   , (1980),  the Supreme Court majority opinion written by Justice Scalia, rejected the Corp’s argument and affirmed Rapanos’ position:

             “on its only plausible interpretation, the phrase ‘the waters of the United States’ includes only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water. . .that are described in ordinary parlance as ‘streams…oceans, rivers…and lakes.’ The phrase does not include channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall.”

This common sense reading of the law was joined by four other justices so by a 5-4 vote, the Corps’ jurisdictions was cut back to the level  which Congress intended, and frankly the only level at which Congress could lawfully act under the Constitution. (Remember that document?  The one that some judges like the Honorable B. Lynn Winmill in Idaho seem to think has dissolved because of age)

The Rapanos case just took the decision of the Court in the famous Cook County Solid Waste case decision to an even more logical position.  In Cook County, the Corps tried to regulate a quarry that connected with absolutely no stream, lake, river or other moving water which could in any way be considered “navigable”.  The Court rejected the Corps jurisdiction, holding that navigable waters was intended to mean the traditional moving bodies of water upon which commerce could take place through navigation.

So, under Rapanos, the Corps could not regulate land on which the water level was high, causing saturation in some places; under Cook County, the Corps could not regulate standing bodies of water that connected with no running water that could be considered navigable.

So, Senator Feingold has undertaken to reverse the Supreme Court and its sensible and constitutional approach, by introducing a bill which re-defines the water that comes under the control of the Corps.  He does so by including in the definition of “waters” dry land and potholes.  By the magic of the bill, dirt would become water for the federal bureaucrats.

His bill goes to the extreme. Consider how he defines “water”:

                “all waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate [solely within the confines of a state]  waters, their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams)

mudflats, sandflats,wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes [Author’s note: a “playa” lake is the “lower part of an inland desert drainage basin that is periodically filled with alkaline and briny salts washed down by rainwater from surrounding highlands”---want to try navigating a playa lake?], natural ponds, and all impoundments of the foregoing, to the fullest extent that these waters, or activities affecting these waters, are subject to the legislative power of Congress under the Constitution.”

The good Senator would turn over to federal bureaucrats EVERY PIECE OF FARM AND RANCH GROUND IN THE NATION under this definition.  And, when he adds “actitivies affecting” the definitions, he turns over to the federal bureaucrats every shovel full of dirt that a farmer or rancher, or irrigator of a front lawn lifts and turns in order to utilize high water table land. 

Now, very liberal critics will say that I stretch the meaning by saying that the Feingold act will apply to front lawns and back lawns throughout the nation.  How so?  Irrigation water flows to a lawn from an “impoundment” of water which is covered; what is the difference between a front lawn and a “wet meadow” other than size?  As I have always argued, give a bureaucrat the opportunity to stretch language and he will.  As a matter of fact, isn’t that the way we reached this state of the law----by the Corps making its own stretch on the Congressional language?

While Senator Feingold objects mightily to placement of public land in wilderness, he doesn’t blink at extending federal power to the level of land use control which is outside the scope of federal jurisdiction.  His bill places the Corps of Engineers in a zoning authority for lands totally within a state’s boundaries.  And, that clearly violates the Tenth Amendment which is in the Constitution the good Senator took an oath to support.

As the Court in Rapanos, said:

                  “[the Government’s position] would ‘result in a significant impingement of the States’ traditional and primary power over land and water use.’  Regulation of land use, as through the issuance of the development permits sought by petitioners in both of these cases is a quintessential state and local power.’ . . .

The extensive federal jurisdiction urged by the Government would authorize the Corps to function as a de facto regulator of immense stretches of intrastate land—an authority the agency has shown its willingness to exercise with the scope  of discretion that would befit a local zoning board.”

Ah, yes, Mr. Justice Scalia, and your remarks were directed at actions at least involving water:  how much more is the intrusion into local land use control when the Corps,under the Feingold bill, can regulate “pot holes”, dry spots, and irrigation of lawns.

Well, to end as we started, “We’re all mad here” said the Cheshire Cat.

Somewhere, in the Congress, we at the ground level of America must find someone who sees that the nation cannot be governed by a Cat with a grin.

WE ARE JUST DUMB

 

We are just dumb. Lots of smart people say so.  The government tells us so and you know they wouldn’t lie to us. The news media thinks we’re dumb too. They think we are so dumb that they have to tell us what we just heard someone say one minute ago on live TV. When they explain “what we should have heard if we were smart”, instead of what we actually heard, this is called “spin”. The environmentalist’s think we’re dumb too. They believe that we are too dumb to know what we should do with our own property.  

 

People who are really smart, and are therefore qualified to tell other people what to do, are called Socialists. These Socialists try to make our lives more meaningful by telling us what is dumb and what is smart. (They even put labels on things so we will know). Not to make it too complicated for the simpleminded masses to grasp they label things that we should do as “Smart ---something-or-other.” Such as “Smart Growth”, “Smart Cards” and coming to your neighborhood soon, “Smart Food.” So anytime you see something labeled as “smart” you should automatically know this it is good because ---well-- “they” say it is. Everything else is not smart or is more commonly known as “dumb”.

 

Here are a few examples:

“Smart Growth”… Obviously we dumb property owners don’t know how to use our property. We don’t have a clue about where we wanted to live or work and how we should get back and forth between work and home. We were just dumb when we moved our families to the suburbs or out into the country to find a better place to raise our children. We were fools when we left the congestion and danger of the city. When we escaped that was not smart. We were labeled “despoilers” because we spoiled the countryside. They figured that we couldn’t spell “despoilers” so as a favor they called us sprawlers. They figured we could understand that. (Sprawl sounds like some drunk laid out on the living-room floor doesn’t it. Not a pretty picture.) “Sprawl” is actually defined as when you live where you want to live. “Smart Growth” is when you live where the Socialist want you to live. Obviously Sprawl is bad. Smart growth is good. The fact that we are willing to travel several hours a day back and forth to work in order to keep our families from living in substandard conditions or to have the freedom to live as we chose means we are just dumb. We should all repent and move into five story walk-up “ghetto style” buildings down town, with no yards and no automobiles allowed, like the Sierra Club wants us to do. That way we could quit uglying up the countryside with our homes and schools and families and we could give 50% of America to the United Nations and the environmental groups as wildlife habitat. 40% of America would be “human free” as Mother Earth and the Socialist want it to be with another 10% used as buffer zones to keep ordinary people from contaminating the wilderness. This is all explained by some very smart people in the “The Wildlands Project”.  I still don’t understand why I should want to go along with that. I guess I am just dumb.  But maybe you can figure it out. See  www.propertyrights.com for full details and maps that show whose land they are going to take. If you want to be smart you’ll read this.   

 

“Smart chip”: Soon we want need money. You will have a smart chip under the skin of your index finger. This way you won’t lose it. You will simply place your finger on a scanner at the store and then everybody will know what you buy and how much money you have left in the bank. If you are dumb or drunk, the government can scan your finger and help you remember who you are and where you are at all times. If you forget what your teenage children look like the police can help you find them too. Putting that chip in your finger might hurt and some people won’t like it. Dumb people might object, so for now, they are just going to put it on your “National ID card”. Later, after you get used to the idea, they will stick it under your skin.

 

“Smart product identification”: Soon there will be smart chips imbedded in everything we buy. That way satellites can track products and see where they are and how they are being used for the lifetime of the product. There are many benefits to this system, if for example, your shirt starts to run about the country then smart people will know where you are too. (Assuming of course that you are in the shirt.) This information is important in case someone, say your wife or the government, needs to find you. These smart chips also will allow the government to track what happens to everything you buy. That way if you are too dumb to dispose of it like smart people say you should they can “fine” you enough “smart dollars” so that you won’t forget again.

 

“Smart cars”: You have heard those advertisements about people who are dumb and accidentally lock their sleeping babies up in their cars with the engine running or have an accident and need help. These smart cars talk back to them and tell them that help is on the way or simply unlock the door for them. Amazing. They know exactly where they are without being told. Recently I read about a court case where smart people were listening in on what bad guys were saying while in their cars. Now we find out that not only can we talk to them when we want to but they can listen to us when they want to. This makes police and FBI eavesdropping so much easier. 

 

“Smart Cow Disease”: Recently we had another case of mad cow disease come into America from Canada. Not to worry, the smart people will save us. Since the number of imported cattle is relatively small by comparison to our native cattle herds and since the United States does not have any of these diseases in our domestic cattle, it was suggested (by some yokel) that we mark foreign cattle on entry, keep separate records on them and then not mix them with our domestic animals. Imported beef products would be marked with country of origin labels and also handled separately. This wall of protection would have cost the consumer only one tenth of one cent per pound and would have been eliminated the problem. This was obviously too cheap, effective and simple to implement. No, no the smart people said. They would rather put a “smart cow chip” behind the ear of all 140,000,000 cattle in America. We should do it this their way because it is expensive, causes a lot of trouble for American producers and is totally worthless since our cattle are not the ones with the diseases. This also allows them to practice identifying large numbers of big dumb critters. These folks are planning ahead. They probably figure that if it works for cows it will work for cowboys.

 

We dumb people are really lucky that we have elitists running around putting “smart” labels on things so we will know what is “good” and what is bad for the world. Our government schools are also busy dumbing down our students so that we will know that the Socialists are the only ones who should be allowed to put on labels. All we have to remember is that anything whose name starts off with “smart” is good for mankind and we should do what ever these smart programs tell us to do.

 

All of these “Smart Items” fall under the United Nations Agenda 21 program called, “Sustainability.”  Sustainability means to make something last for a long time. The best way to make something sustainable is to not let you and me use any of it. If we don’t use it, it can last practically forever. In the old days Americans used what was at hand or invented what they needed for the future. This Nation was built on optimism and self-reliance. Sometimes an awful lot can be accomplish by dumb people if they don’t believe “that it can’t be done”.  Our Nation was dumb to fight England for independence. We were dumb to settle the West and we were really dumb to fight in World War II for the sake of other people’s freedoms. Building America took courage, sacrifice and a lot of hard work and innovation. America was known the world over for our “can do” attitude. Now we are learning to “just do with-out”.  Now we have “Sustainability”.

 

You know I think I liked it better back when people had common sense. Back then people knew that a man was more important than a minnow and that government was supposed to be smaller and more efficient. Back then the people at the Department of agriculture were smarter than the produce they monitored. Back then you didn’t have to be told when something was smart, you just knew. That was back when we believed that the Supreme Power was God and not The United Nations.  I miss “back then”. I guess that makes me really dumb.

 

 

                                    Kenneth Freeman

                 Chairman, the Alliance For citizens Rights

The Meaning of Property

 

     The American dream started with these words: “…all men are created equal… they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and property… (The Declaration of Independence- first draft)

     Our Founding Fathers understood that the protection of property is the most important responsibility designated to government. They wisely perceived that it is the right to use one’s property that overshadows all other considerations, because the term property embodies all we are and all we own, including life and liberty.

     In fact, virtually everything in our lives necessitates the use of some form of property. A car has value because we can use it to take us where we want to go. A house has value because we can use it for shelter. A beautiful painting has value because we can take pleasure in using it for enjoyment.

     Even an idea or a thought has value because we derive some benefit from using it. But in every case it is property’s potential use and what someone would be willing to pay to use it that gives it value. If the usage, or partial usage, of our property is taken from us, even if we still own it, then property has been stolen. To fully comprehend this, consider the greatest property theft of all, to take

another’s life. When a murder is committed, the murderer takes from the victim everything he has, or ever would have had, because he steals from him the use of his allotted time on earth.

     The framers of the Alabama 1901 Constitution also understood the paramount importance of property rights. In Section 35, under “Object of Government” our Constitution states: “That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property…” It further states: “and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression.” To date, I have not found one single state legislator who could correctly answer the simple question, “What is the purpose of government?” And yet, it is clearly stated in the quote above from the Alabama 1901 Constitution, which they all swore to defend and protect when they took their oath of office.

     Under Feudalism, Fascism, Communism, Socialism, and Environmentalism, in fact under anything but freedom and individual ownership of property, a powerful few control all property and the many are at their mercy. The single most important factor in creating the greatness and prosperity of America is in our freedom to choose how we use our lives and our property.

     Karl Marx wrote, “Communism can be summarized in one sentence: The abolition of private property”

     "We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: The stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission – which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” -Ayn Rand.

     Unless we wake up and defend our rights, our freedom and our property will surely slip away. But that is redundant is it not, since liberty and property are one and the same? Taking property is taking liberty.

 

Ken Freeman, Chairman, ALLIANCE FOR CITIZENS RIGHTS

BIG, COLORFUL, EXCITING, TEA PARTY OF TAX PROTESTORS SCHEDULED FOR MADISON WISCONSIN

  ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2009----Sponsored by Wisconsin Americans for Prosperity---Fred Kelly Grant

 

Mark Block, Director of Wisconsin’s Chapter of Americans for Prosperity has proudly announced the Tea Party scheduled for Wednesday, April 15, 2009, in Madison Wisconsin.  The event, designed to protest the amount of tax we pay, and frankly our loss of liberty which seems to increase as taxes increase.  (Could that just possibly be because, as our forefathers feared, the bigger the national government grows the more it costs, and the more money the government collects the bigger it grows.  Lucky us, we are the ones to see the proof of what they warned-----and what they tried with their lives to prevent).

The event, planned for some months, will feature as speakers, Representative Paul Ryan, the first Republican to actually come up with an understandable alternate to the President’s budget and economic program.  Rather than just oppose, without an idea, Rep. Ryan came forward with a plan which now has finally been picked up by the press.

Other speakers will be Vicki McKenna, one of the most outspoken, but accurate, talk show hosts that we have come across in many travels around the country.  She conducts a program which gives both sides their opportunity, but conservatives love to appear on the show while liberals are far more reluctant because Vicki’s questions get to the facts that often they don’t know or can’t justify.

Speakers also include talk show hosts Jerry Bader from Green Bay and Pat Snyder of Wausau.  Between them, Vicki, Jerry, and Pat cover the state making sure that the conservative voice is head all over the state.     Mark Block will also speak, within weeks of conducting a highly successful Summit in Milwaukee which drew more than 800 to attendance.

Whether you’re from Wisconsin or not, guaranteed you will be in a vigorous group, one which will make its voice heard, if you’re in Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, and a highly liberal capital city.  The more the merrier, to make the statement to a capital city which is so far out of touch with the people of Wisconsin.

For details, go to the website www.fightbackwisconsin.com.  Otherwise, head for Madison and prepare to be at the Alliance Energy Coliseum.  But check out the news release which we are attaching.

I fully recommend that you try to attend this big turn-out, and if you can’t be there and you’re from Wisconsin, then call your legislator and tell him/her of your complaints and your concerns.

If you don’t live in Wisconsin, and you can go, do so to help the Wisconsin crowd grow.  This is one of the states that is most active in trying to help with those issues that help us all.  Mark Block is to be commended for the job he does, and I thank him personally for all that he does.

On Wisconsin.

HAPPY EASTER----A TIME FOR RESTORATION OF SPIRIT AND HOPE

We move along through a year, facing the challenges of lay offs,  loss of investments counted on  for retirement,  family budget shortfalls that bring stress to the parents, taking of hostages, fighting and dying of American lives in far off Middle East, political grid-lock with no real views of the public involved.  Most of the stressful problems just mentioned have nothing to do with our efforts and commitments as individuals.  More powerful interests than us drive these streeses.

But, then comes Christmas, the Birth of the Christ Child who was to bring us salvation.  No matter what the world’s stresses are, on Christmas Eve at midnight, a glorious silence seems to settle on the earth, especially in those places where it is possible for a light snowfall to accompany the birth of Jesus.

And, then at Easter time, the promise is kept.  On Good Friday, our Lord died cruelly by crucifixion, nailed and tied to a wooden cross.  When he died, historians confirm the biblical tail that a huge storm arose quickly with high rolling black clouds and  shots of lighting and accompanying thunder.

But, on this day, on this great day, Jesus rose from the dead as it had been told for centuries.  He then set the role model for us.  There are so many books which have been written about Jesus as a philosopher, a man, a leader, a rabbi, but always the son of God and subject to His laws.  My two favorites are The Jesus I Never Knew, and The Nazarene by Schloem Asch.  Both portray Jesus as I have always hoped he would be: a real man, with problems to overcome, particularly his discipline to set himself up for crucifixion.   “Isn’t there some other  way.”

In the Garden, as we are told drops of blood were wiped from his brow, he pleaded with God to “take this cup from me.”  In one other words, “isn’t there some other way.”  No one else could kill him, no one else had been able to find a way to convict him, the Roman law was fulfilled with innocence when taken before Pilate who said “I find no fault with this man.”  That was the equivalent of a jury verdict of not guilty,  together with a Supreme Court decision affirming the decision.

But He Was not allowed to gain from the innocence proclaimed by Roman law.  He had to give his life for us------at the hands of Satan’s disciples: the people.

Unfortunately there is no other way for us either.  Satan is here, in person, to lead us away from Jesus, away from God.  We have to walk the lonely valley, we have to shoulder our  burdens, and move ahead step after step  after step.  We have to do it as role models for our children and grandchildren----but mostly as Pastor John Hage of St. Antonio’s Cornerstone Church and I agree---mostly for ourselves.  If we don’t forgive ourselves and moves ahead, we make a mess of our lives---because God has already unconditionally forgiven us---no matter what we have done.

And, when  we walk through those burdens, we do not walk alone.  He is with us, and he walks with us.  Thus, is the word, that we walk as God.  We do so because He is in fact within us.

The Easter Message can be stated quite simply:  “He Lives”

We can live our lives quite as simply, if we live as He would have us live.

On this day we can concentrate on that wonderful news from the cemetery---“He is Risen.  He is Lord. He is God.”  And, our future is in His hands.

WELCOME TO A NEW CONTRIBUTOR TO JUSTICE MY ASS.

 

Tammy Dittenbur is a long time friend of mine.  She worked very hard to learn well the art and science of personnel work, and became personnel director at Canyon County and then in Boise City.  She was effective, and she was ethical and honest.  She still is, and has been throughout her ordeals.  I would have trusted her with anything, and still would today.  Tammy was stand-up and straightforward in the inquiry in Boise, and unlike many others including top officials, she entered a plea of guilty when in fact many people learned in the law, including me, thought that technically she was not guilty.  I still believe she was not guilty, and that a trial would have borne that out.  Nevertheless, she entered her plea, and suffered her sentence without whimper or complaint.  It was a sentence that, by any comparative account, was excessive, and was, in my opinion simply used as a political statement by a judge.  But, note that this is my opinion, not Tammy’s.  As her posting today shows, she never has complained about her treatment the way I do.  In my opinion, her case epitomizes Justice My Ass in white collar offenses, where top dogs go free and others suffer.

 

But enough.  Tammy is a loyal wife and mother.  She is active as a volunteer in virtually every way there is.  She has homeschooled, she has written as a journalist, and I am proud that she has written this post.  We are placing her in our “Who Are We” section as a regular contributor, and I can guarantee that anything she writes will teach and carry with it a lesson of life worth learning.-----Fred Kelly Grant, April 9, 2009

 

 

 

CONNECTIONS IN CORRECTIONS-Keeping a Promise

 

Some six years ago I began an ordeal that was both the greatest trial and greatest blessing of my life.  An investigation was launched at my former employer, the City of Boise, and I was subsequently charged with “felony misuse of public funds”, for using a City credit card to make personal purchases.  I plead guilty, was sentenced to five years in prison, with all time suspended except six months in county jail, and was ultimately released after ninety days.  I then served five years probation, which ended December 2, of this year.

 

This missive is not intended to speak to my own case; my guilt; whether I got what I  “deserved”; what happened to others involved in the “scandal”; or what a scoundrel I am.  Rather, this is about the education I received, how I was blessed and to hopefully educate readers who would rather read and learn than go to jail and learn. 

 

I have always been interested in culturization…however and wherever that occurs:  World cultures; occupational sub-cultures; community cultures; ethnic cultures; and gender as a culture.  County jail, as it happens has its own culture.  Jail is a microcosm of murkiness and only by being there as an incarcerated person can one begin to get a feel for what really works and what really does not. 

 

First, the vast majority of seventy or so incarcerated in my dorm were addicts. Most were addicted to meth, prescription drugs, heroin, or cocaine.  Many inmates were State hold, meaning they were awaiting a court proceeding or just transport to a State facility.  Some were Federal hold inmates, awaiting deportation or transport to a Federal facility.  But most were just serving their time for misdemeanor possession, dui, or theft related to their addiction. 

 

The women serving time with me ran the spectrum of age from 18 to 60 or so.  Most were mothers.  Most mothers had no earthly idea where their children were or how they were being cared for.  I heard women curse the letter they received notifying them that their babies had been placed in State foster care.  I watched as one lady found, from a newspaper article, her son was a “Wednesday’s Child”.  I also watched as one young mother received a rare (if not unheard of) emergency phone call through the duty desk, and was told by her “boyfriend” that her two year old baby daughter was dead, beaten and tortured to death.  She was dragged from the facility wailing and screaming by deputies as we all stood sobbing at our bunks, looking on in horror and praying. She was

 placed in the medical unit, and we didn’t ever see her again.  Her “boyfriend” was arrested, convicted and currently is serving a sentence for murder of her baby girl. 

 

I need to interject at this point that although my sentence was unanticipated, mostly because of a combination of naivete on my part and an overconfident defense attorney, I had a rock solid network of support before, during and after my period of incarceration.  I received stacks, literally, of mail every day I was there.  Cards, letters, pictures, inspirational articles, the daily paper, magazines, books, they came daily with love and understanding and I accepted them with gratitude and a heart overflowing.  I was an anomaly. 

 

Most women of any age who find themselves in jail lack the support of even parents or a mate, let alone a church family or good friends.  Many, as it turns out, have more mates, ex-mates, children, parents, and friends IN jail than out of jail.  For many, being walked through the big door in belly chains was more like a class reunion than anything else. 

 

So here are the things I observed that troubled me, haunt me still , and fill me with the desire to let others know and find out what can be changed for the better.

 

If a woman goes to prison for a year or longer, when she is released, she gets some assistance in reintegrating.  She has also likely received medical treatment, diagnosis of any mental illnesses, addiction classes, and will receive a stipend to help her pay rent for the first month or so of life “on the outs”. 

 

When a woman goes to County jail for thirty, sixty, ninety days there is no such assistance.  She can access addiction or behavioral change classes ONLY if she can pay for them.  I believe the classes were over a hundred dollars apiece, and if my memory serves me correctly, the behavioral change class was over two hundred dollars.  So, most girls get only what is court ordered and many have to spend more time in jail than they are sentenced to in order to get into a class and pay for it. 

 

Every day spent in County jail costs the inmate twenty five dollars.  It caps at five hundred dollars, but almost everyone sentenced spends at least twenty days.  So immediately upon being released, the woman is indebted to the County five hundred dollars, on top of any fines, restitution, class fees, fees for interlock devices, etc. 

 

Most women who knew they were coming to jail, put their earthly possessions in storage.  They paid a month or two on the storage unit and left it to a friend or family member to pay anything after that. So after four months, their belongings are auctioned off, and they exit jail with nothing but the clothes on their backs.  Women who were arrested, without warning and held continually, just abandoned their lives, and now, their druggie friends can pillage and plunder, helping their own sorry selves to any of their belongings they want.  They likely will also end up evicted from their housing.  Many are in public housing and because they are charged with a drug offense (even off premise) they are evicted.  Once you are evicted from public housing, you are ineligible for public housing ever again.  If they were in public housing because they were disabled, or income qualified, they now are forced to find an unsubsidized apartment or house, live with the same druggie friends who stole all their stuff, or rely on a shelter. 

 

Women who are released from State prison are automatically qualified for homelessness assistance.  Women who are held in County jail are not.  Women in State custody get medication and basic necessities, and then can purchase additional “niceties” off commissary, if they have money.  Women in County jail, if they are indigent, get a piece of paper, a stamped envelope, a lip balm and that’s about it.  If they want deodorant, underwear, shampoo, socks, shower shoes, etc. they must have commissary money to purchase them.  Although the rules are such that no trading or loaning of personal hygiene items is allowed, the system of the haves and have-nots exists to the extent that it creates a security issue.  Everything is on the barter system.  Everything is quid pro quo.  Finding a person to freely give of their substance in jail is a rarity, as one might imagine.  

 

Drug users are often emaciated and sick when they are incarcerated.  They may come into jail weighing 95lbs and after six months of oatmeal, bologna, and high carb diets, they exit at 140lbs.  The clothes they came in with don’t fit.  They have no one to bring them clean clothes in the proper size, so they are turned out in a pair of boxer shorts and a tee shirt they acquired while in jail. 

 

My point in all of this (and I really could go on and on) is not to hope everyone will have pity upon these women.  Rather, that we will think about the effectiveness, or lack of effectiveness, of the system in place.  There is nothing to help those exiting County jail to leave the life of drug abuse, thievery, etc. behind.  There is nothing to help those exiting County jail to get a job, put together a budget, stay away from old unhealthy relationships.  There is nothing to help those exiting County jail.  

 

Those leaving incarceration for a felony are almost always on felony probation through State probation and parole.  They are subject to all manner of restrictions intended to give structure to their lives and help them build new habits and make better choices.  My own observation of that system is it is pitifully overburdened to the point it can only concern itself with the dangerous, violent offenders, while those with addictions fall through the cracks of budget cutbacks and program deficiencies. 

 

It’s easy to give to the food bank, local coat drive; donate to the town art program or buy carnival tickets so less fortunate kids can go to the circus.  I’ve done all of those things before.  But now, when I can give, I go to the jail and find someone who hasn’t had any money on her commissary books for awhile and I put twenty dollars on her account.  That week she can have deodorant, shampoo, and maybe a cup of hot chocolate.

 

I have written to soldiers in Iraq, during this, and the Gulf war.  Now, I write to ladies, some of whom I know and others I don’t.  I try to give them humor, inspiration, encouragement, and I try to love them where and how they are.  I try to remember these women at Christmas, because I  know firsthand the blessings bestowed by those that drop a card or a letter in the mail, with something as simple as a picture of a manger and the Christchild. 

 

I want the general public to know that the system is broken.  Inmates are not being helped, but are sent out as bad or worse than they went in. The system lends itself to institutionalization of detainees, just to the extent that they see it as comfort, in what may be a life too wretched to fathom fixing.  Thus they return over and over again. 

 

Many are mentally ill.  Either they use drugs to medicate the illness or the illness was borne out of chronic or acute drug use.   Whichever the case, jail does not help stabilize nor treat the illness. 

 

We should be CRYING out for treatment facilities, mental health system enhancements and quality treatment of those incarcerated.  I have heard all of the arguments about costs, taxpayer burdens, and even those of the “let ‘em rot” variety.  But, I am here to tell you that the cost of leaving the system as is, is real and impacts your and my bottom line. Not only are we paying it, but we are left with tormented souls who are doomed to repeat their mistakes over and over again. 

 

I promised them I would never forget them.  I could never forget them.  They are just like the rest of us.  They were soccer moms, daughters, wives, cheerleaders, grocery checkers, secretaries and volunteers.  They deserve a better system.  WE deserve a better system.

PATRICK DORINSON: Cowboy Wisdom — 5 Rules Obama Needs Right Now

 

Pennsylvania's Signs of Spring by Rosemary and Walter Brasch

For some people, the first day of spring occurs when they see a crocus poking its purple head through the snow. For others, it's seeing the first robin. But these are unreliable signs, for nature is so unpredictable. For us, the harbinger of spring is seeing that first pylon on the Interstate and just about any state highway. Those orange, pointy cone things bring the first bright color to a drab winter landscape, forecasting what is to come. Sometimes, there are even workers doing whatever it is that PennDOT workers do on the roads-all of them working behind signs that proclaim "Detour," "Lane Closed," and "Be Prepared to Stop.". It wouldn't be spring unless at least one lane of traffic on anything that has concrete or asphalt as a base is closed, and thousands of drivers are forced to get up close and personal with each other. We've seen strangers who have spent so much time together they have separation anxiety when, as the traffic inches along, the much-anticipated off-ramp appears. They need not worry-chances are good they'll meet again, since the same stretches of highway are often under construction all Spring, all Summer, and all Fall. The only thing that seems to make the pylons disappear is, alas, an early Winter. Ask truckers, and they'll tell you that Pennsylvania has some of the worst roads in the country. It might be because at one time, companies bid cheap and constructed the Interstate cheaply, bribing and kicking back to politicians, skimming profits. It might be because these companies knew their future wasn't in building a roadway, but in making sure it was built just well enough to fool inspectors. These companies and now PennDOT, which fixes and refixes, modifies and improves, should be re-named Planned Obsolescence Incorporated. Granted, our weather, with cold and hot extremes, also adds greatly to yearly maintenance. However, most of the work appears to involve moving one acceptable ramp over about six feet to-we suppose-make it "better."           While we support President Obama's stimulus program, and we hope every American who wants a job gets one, there's one phrase being used which causes us to shudder-"shovel ready." This, of course, lends itself to highway, bridge, and overpass work and, with that, more of those blooming pylons.

                Oh Dick Bove! Remember Me?

 

             THE CONSTITUTIONAL QUIZ

        By: Orville Seymer

 

Ever since the Kelo v New London decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the court decided the government could take your private property if a developer could generate more tax revenue from your property than you could, there has been in increased awareness placed on the subject of property rights.

But what exactly are these property rights and where do they come from? It will be easier to answer what property rights are than it will be to answer where they come from but I will give it a try.

Most of already know this but it is good to have a quick refresher. The entire matter of property rights has been focused on 2 little words since the Kelo decision. Those 2 little words are “Eminent Domain”. In brief,  “Eminent Domain” is the ability of the government to take your property (for public use) if the government pays you “just compensation for the taking of your property. You will find this clause in the 5^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

If you were a student in law school, they would teach you about property rights as being a bundle of rights that you have in your property. The first of this bundle of rights is the right to use your property. This right has been constantly eroded since the early days of the Founding. Initially you could use your property any way that you saw fit as long as you did not cause any harm to your neighbor or your neighbor’s property. There were few if any regulations on the use of your private property. Then along came the matter of “Zoning” and “Land Use” and local and state governments got involved in telling you what you could and could not use your property for. In essence, the private property owner was forced to ask the government for permission (from the Overlord) to use their property.

The second right in the bundle of property rights is the right to “alienate” your property. The right to alienate simply means that you have the right to sell it or dispose of your property as you see fit. This right has largely stayed in tact but the government is always trying to use their power to force property owners to do things that they may not want to such as forcing them to use contracts that have language that is approved by the state.

The third right in this bundle of property rights may be the most important right. It is the right to exclude other people from your property. The most significant part of this right is the ability to exclude the government from your private property. This right may surprise some of you especially if you have ever had a state game warden or a local building inspector force their way onto your property simply by showing you a badge or by throwing their considerable power around.

In order to illustrate where property rights come from, I have developed a fun little 5 question quiz that I call my “Constitutional Quiz” that you can give to your friends or elected representatives the next time that they come knocking on your door looking for your vote.

Like any good quiz, it starts out with the easy questions and it gets more difficult as you progress through the test. So here we go.

1.                          Who was the first President of the United States? Hint: If   you said George Washington, you got the first question wrong.

2.                          What Federal document started the Revolutionary war? Hint: It is a simple answer, don’t over think this one.

3.                          What Federal document ended the Revolutionary war? Hint: This historical event did not occur in the United States.

 

I will give you the answers to the first 3 questions before moving on to the more difficult questions. 1. The first President of the united States was a man named Samuel Huntington. It is a little bit of a trick question because George Washington was actually the 1^st President under our current Constitution and Samuel Huntington was the 1^st President under the old “Articles of Confederation” I give you that question just to rattle your brain a little because we have all been taught from the time that we were very young that George Washington was our first President.

            The answer to the 2^nd question is very simple. The Federal document that started the Revolutionary war is the “Declaration of Independence” I told you it not to over think that question.

            The federal document that ended the Revolutionary war was the “Treaty of Paris” Now on to the difficult portion of the quiz.

4.                          What specific rights did the “Treaty of Paris” give us? Give up? This is a difficult question. The “Treaty of Paris” gave us “Allodial Property Rights”

You say that you have never heard of this word “Allodial?” Don’t try to find it in your copy of Webster’s Dictionary because it is not there. You can find it in a “Black’s Law dictionary or an on-line dictionary.

What does the word “Allodial” mean? Let me try to explain it this way. You may have heard of the “Feudal System” of property rights. Under the Feudal system, the King or the Overlord owned all of the property and the serfs paid rent or service for the use of the property. Today, instead of rent or service, we have a new word, we call it “Property Taxes” which you pay to the government for the use of “your” property. Allodial is just the opposite of the Feudal system. Allodialism is a system of in which real property is held in absolute ownership without service or acknowledgement of a superior. In a nutshell, “Allodial” means that the government or the overlord has no right to tax or regulate your private property. Please don’t go down to your local city treasurer and demand a refund of your property taxes. It is a long established principle that the government can tax your private property, the real question here is do they have the ability to regulate your private property?

            Now back to the last question of the quiz.

5. What is the significance of the “Allodial system” of property rights? Article 1 Section 14 of the Wisconsin Constitution says “All land within the state is declared to be Allodial, and feudal tenures are prohibited.” If you got the answer to question #5 correct you are probably a history professor because of the hundreds of people that I have given this little quiz to, only about 4 people have gotten all the answers right. I urge you to check your state Constitution to see if you have “Allodial Rights” in your Constitution. There are about a dozen states in which a clause similar to Wisconsin’s resides in the state Constitution. If nothing else, take a few minutes to read your state Constitution. You will find it to be an incredibly detailed document of great interest.

            Now I hate to have to break the bad news to you, but you simply do not own the property that you thought you have owned all of these years. You are little more than a tenant who is paying rent (property taxes to the Overlord) for the use of the property. Private property gives people the ability to have sufficient wealth if they have to resist government force and private property gives people a place to position themselves, if they must resist government pressure.

            So what do we do as property owners who wish to restore our property rights? That is a very difficult question. I’m not sure that there are any good or easy answers. It has been said that if you are not aware of your rights, then you don’t have any. You are now aware of a right that you previously never new existed.

            So the first step is awareness. You are now aware of a right that our Founding Fathers intended for us to posses but it has been eroded by court decisions and a general ignorance of what our Founding Fathers had in mind for the role of government. The next step is making others aware of what “Allodial Rights” are. I have yet to find any Attorney that has ever heard of the word “Allodial” so it is clear that law schools are not teaching this fundamental concept in law schools today.

            It is becoming clearer as every day passes, politicians and bureaucrats are trying to control something that they don’t own. Think about it this way, go over to your next door neighbor and tell him that you don’t like the color of his house. What do you think he will tell you? Yet bureaucrats and politicians are forever creating new rules and regulations that tell us what we can or cannot do with the property that we own and are paying the tax bill on.

There are some Constitutional experts who say that the Constitution in its entirety was drafted and designed simply to protect your private property. Unfortunately, that is not happening in today’s political environment. In fact, just the opposite is happening. You have all heard about environmentalists trying to restrict private property rights due to wetlands or to save some endangered plant or animal. And the newest potential taking of private property rights is the problem of global warming which is just another way of restricting your use of your property and giving the government more power over your private property.

So to put it mildly, private property owners are under attack and we have to make a stand and tell the government that we will not allow them to take any more of our rights. 

        On Thursday, April 4, 1985, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot down by a hiding, cowardly gunman.  James Earl Ray,  a white hate monger, completely unknown to the world prior to his moment of ultimate cowardice, deprived the world of one of the great leaders of humanity.

         On November 23, 1963, a similar coward, Oswald, struck down John Fitzgerald Kennedy, from a hiding place where he secreted himself for the very purpose of depriving the world of a stirring, uplifting leader of humanity.

          From the Oswald strike, which we always knew was not a one-man attack, through the striking down of Dr. King in Memphis, which we always knew was not a one-man attack, there was a state of unrest in the United States which the residents of Baltimore felt on a daily basis.

          In Baltimore, as in all the urban centers of mass populations, racial unrest simmered just below the surface, sometimes boiling over in events which warned of destructive uprisings to come. 

          During the days leading up to the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the Kennedys Department of Justice (under John and Bobby) had stepped up its efforts to secure Afro Americans who sought to demonstrate their Constitutional rights to an integrated education as set forth clearly and correctly in Brown v. Board of Education, a 1950s decision of the United States Supreme Court.  (Bigots often forget, or refuse to admit, that this was a Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, an appointee of  President Dwight David Eisenhower, a Republican and conservative in government; Warren had been governor of California, once nominated by both the Republican and Democrat parties for the same office in the same election.)  The efforts led to riots and to brutality by southern police and government leaders such as the infamous Bull Connors in Alabama (whose chief claims to fame rose from photos and videos of him turning vicious dogs and high pressure fire hoses on Afro-American children and civilians).

           In the years following the Kennedy murder from ambush, riots in Watts (L.A.), Detroit, New Jersey, and 125 other American cities broke out.  Chicago was on the brink of riots throughout the long, hot summer of 1967.  Poor urban Afro Americans (then called “blacks” in the politically correct jargon, “blacks” having succeeded “colored” and “Negroes” as politically correct references), seemingly tired of being sent to Viet Nam in highly out of proportion numbers, and demanding to be included in Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs (much ballyhooed as being the answer to all urban poverty), seethed.  Across America, fire hydrants were opened by mayors and police commissioners to wet down and discourage demonstrators on the city’s streets.  The affected 128 different cities included all major urban areas of the north, east, Midwest, and southern California.  They also included large and small cities in the South.

           Within eighteen months of John Kennedy’s murder, deadly riots broke out in Watts, the Los Angeles neighborhood that includes the prestigious University of Southern California.  In a week’s time, 1,032 people were injured, 34 murders had occurred, and nearly 4,000 people were arrested.  The riots began in response to a simple drunk driving arrest by a California Highway patrolman which featured absolutely no police brutality or misconduct as evidenced in the much later Rodney King beating inspired riots.

             In 1967 a 5 day riot in Detroit resulted in 43 murders, 1189 injuries and over 7000 arrests.

             It was as  though a smoldering volcano was waiting to erupt.  The murder of Dr. King ended the waiting.  Shock waves ran through us in Baltimore.  From the time we heard of the murder on the night of April 4, a Thursday night preceding Easter week, a very holy week for Catholics who made up a good percentage of the population of Baltimore, Black and White, prayers were offered throughout the city, not only for Dr. King and his family, but for us.  We prayed, as encouraged by Bobby Kennedy, who running for President, spoke, brokenly to a campaign crowd in Indianopolis that night:

                       “I have bad news for you, for all our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

                        Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to Justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

                        “for those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act [murder of Dr. King by a white man], against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling.  I had a member of my family killed [his brother Jack, our president], but he was killed by a white man.  But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.”

                       “What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

                            So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our country, which all of us love—a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

                             We can do well in this country.  We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future.  It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

                             But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

                             Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

                             Let us dedicate ourselves to that end, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”

              Many pundits, but more importantly civic and police leaders in Indianopolis credited this speech, given to a predominately Afro American crowd, for prevenging violence on the streets of Indianopolis during that night and the ensuing days of violence throughout the rest of the nation.

             In Baltimore that night,  my wife Lodice and I went to Corpus Christi church in the city center to join our close friends and Godparents of our son Andrew, in a prayer service hastily called by Monsignor Ballard.  Such services were being offered in Catholic and other churches throughout the city.  As the Monsignor prayed for Dr. King and his family, and for the souls of all Americans who would suffer during the next few days (voicing all our fears and certain beliefs that we would experience a violent reaction to the murder), Lodice cried.  And, so did I.  For an America we saw crumbling at the hands of cruel, cowardly men spurred on and paid by the worst elements of a society supposedly committed to Christianity and  other sources of faith and strength arising from compassion, not murder, for our son and the future of a land based on a craving for individual and collective freedom, independence, and  personal safety and security.  

             As we quietly left the church, we both felt an unrest in that predominantly Afro American city center neighborhood, an unrest not normally there in mid evening.  Sirens in the air seemed to be more prevalent than normally, people on the streets were hurriedly walking---much more cognizant to their surroundings, it seemed, than normal.  I told Lodice, “we’re in for deep, deep trouble,I’m afraid.”  She just squeezed my hand, and holding Andrew more tightly, I lead us quickly to our car without letting her stop to visit as she usually did with everybody on the street.

             Friday, April 5, 1968, was uneasy in the courthouse.  Nothing that one could put a finger on, nothing specific that one could describe, nothing that was borne out by activity, but there was a specter of violence walking among us.  My boss, Charles E. Moylan, called his division leaders together in the States’s Attorney’s office and talked in general about how the city might face violence, and about how we might have to be prepared to face heavy security in the courthouse come Monday.  Again, he could not specify any immediate danger, but he and we felt the weight of the air.  No specific plans for the following week were laid out, just a warning to be alert throughout the week for potential problems of security.

            On Saturday, April 6, 1968, Lodice and I shopped, but we didn’t go to the Lexington Market in downtown Baltimore as we often did.  We went, instead to Towson and Timonium to the north of the city---an area predominantly white, and seemingly far removed from any potential of violence.  No one spoke of the fear that no doubt we all had.  We bought paint and brushes because Lodice had finally decided on the permanent colors for Andrew’s room and for the breakfast room in the house.  We bought our English group home in the Belvedere-York Road area just a year before we knew Andrew was on the way, and Lodice had delayed color selection until she knew whether Andrew was to be a boy or girl.

          Saturday afternoon was a painting day, hot and humid outside and inside.  We scraped walls to the sounds of WBLM radio.  As evening approached,  we turned on television to watch our Saturday shows as we finally finished the dreaded “scraping” and got ready to paint.  Finally, the news broke that violence had erupted in the east side of Baltimore, near the large Sears store on Eastern Avenue at Harford Road.  News reporters said, reading over videos of a crowd running down a sidewalk, that store front windows had been broken, looting was occurring, and fires had broken out.   Apparently, the mayor had called upon the Governor to mobilize the national guard.

           Lodice asked what the trouble meant for us, for me in my job.  I said, not much, except that our case load would increase over the next few weeks, and security would be tight in the courthouse.  She said she wanted to go to the early Palm Sunday mass the next day, and took Andrew downstairs to get him ready for bed, outside the paint smell.

           The telephone rang, and Lodice told me it was Charley Moylan calling.   He told me that the Eastern District police station lock-up was already filling up with looters being arrested and held for initial appearance the next morning before a Magistrate.  (Initial appearance was a requirement under Maryland Rules of Criminal Procedure; it was a simple appearance at which the Magistrate assured that the defendant knew the charge against him, that a reasonable bail was set, and that the defendant knew that he had the right to be represented by counsel—either at his expense or by court appointment at the public expense; the requirement was that the initial appearance had to occur within 24 hours of arrest and detention.)

            Charley said he wanted me to go to the Eastern District precinct house the next morning, set up a process for moving through masses of defendants which could then be used throughout the city wherever necessary, and help establish an orderly process for getting defendants moved through the arrest/detention step and either back on the street or to the City Jail.  The warden of the City Jail could not legally receive any prisoner without official papers showing the charge against the defendant and further showing  that an initial appearance had occurred and a bail either set or denied.

         I asked him whether he had any idea how long I might be there, that I was trying to decide whether to ask Lodice to wait to go to a later Mass with me.  He said I had better not plan on a specific time for Mass, but that he thought I could be through about noon.  But, he did say that he would ask the Captain to send a radio car to pick me up and take me to the Eastern, because it was not certain that my car would be safe parked at the station house.

         Our conversation was fairly routine, very calm, with no seeming concern on either of our parts that the city and our office were in for a long, hard battle.  I agreed to be ready at 6:00 am so that we could get a process set up before court opened at 10 am, regular Sunday initial appearance time.

        I told Lodice that if she waited until the 11am Mass, I might be through and able to meet her at St.Bernards, the church to which Monsignor Ballard had moved and we followed.  The Church was closer to the inner city than our home, but it was not within an area which I feared would be affected.  She was relieved that a police car would  pick me up, and was glad that she would have our car to drive to Mass.   We painted until after mid-night,  listening to music  on WBLM which had now replaced news reports.

        Sleep came easily,  with no anticipation of the utter horror that lay ahead for Baltimore and its entire population through the riots which broke fully into the open on Palm Sunday morning.  By the early morning of the day upon which Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time, the nation was headed full-bore into violence that would take hundreds of lives, injure thousands, and destroy property beyond anticipation or even final evaluation after the riots ended.  Before the riots came to an end,  I was completely aware that the criminal justice system was not competent to withstand the pressure that would come from any mass civil obedience.

           The cowardly murder of Dr. King resulted in violence and destruction and crime which Dr. King himself deplored, and had often prevented through passionate, heart felt speeches given to chuch assemblages in the name of Christ, the King of Peace.  But, this time, he was gone; unable to prevent the violent reactions to his murder---the violent reactions to all the brutality, all the deprivations of rights---actual and perceived---and all the governmental apathy that existed throughout the nation.

            Unknown to us on that night of April 6, was the extent of the  violence  already taking apart the cities of Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Newark, Washington, D.C. and up to 100 other cities and towns.  Before Easter week ended, National Guard troops had been mobilized and put to work in 36 cities, in 18 states---a total of 14,811 Guardsmen put to work to assist beleaguered police departments.  While statistics are far from certain relating to the violent week after the murder, it is clear that from 39 to 46 murders occurred as a direct result of the riots.

              A noted national reporter, Edward Kosner, stated that “it was Pandora’s box flung open---an apocalyptic act that loosed the furies brooding in the shadows of America’s sullen ghettos”.   Robert Kennedy’s spontaneous eulogy delivered to the campaign meeting in Indianopolis was the only voice of reason which seemed to be heeded---and Indianapolis was spared the devastation that hit all other major cities.

              My experiences during the week beginning on Palm Sunday, 1968, proved to me that the American criminal justice system is completely inadequate to provide security to honest citizens and victims of crime, and totally inadequate to even hint at providing  so-called “justice” to any citizens  residing in the seat of municipal authority.  The origins of Justice My Ass were emerging during that week; even though it took thirty years to assign the name to the book project and forty five years to reach the writing stage.   By July 4, 2009, the book will be written----and it will be up to the publishing business to determine whether there is a market.

              On Palm Sunday, 2009, hopefully church goers throughout the land will reflect on the ugliness that emerged on that day in 1968, just 41 years earlier, and will pray that never we have to face such violence and unrest again. 

              Robert Kennedy, who may have saved Indianopolis on that fateful April 4, 1968, was himself murdered by a cowardly, lie in wait, assassin just two short months after Dr. King was murdered.  Kennedy was shot down by a killer hiding in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel where Kennedy had just finished an acceptance speech following  his victory in the California presidential primary.  That act completed perhaps the most politically violent decades in the history of the world.  Three fighters for independent rights of the working class of America were stricken----John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy within that one ten year span of American history.  Three men who portrayed the ideals which lead me to law school at the University of Chicago law school, and who portrayed the ideals that guided Lodice and  me to an American political belief system that never changed for either of us.

               Did the murders of these three giants change  America?  Perhaps, at least on the surface.  We do now have an Afro-American president of the United States, a reality impossible to have achieved in 1968; we have an unprecedented number of Afro-American judges and elected officials; and we have moved far beyond the “white only, colored only” signs which did still label the areas of segregation that thrived in 1968.  But, segregation and apathy to discrimination still prevail throughout the nation.  Most of the hurtful catcalls and insulting remarks have moved underground, but still exist.  The murders cannot and have not eliminated racism; but they have resulted in millions of Americans vowing to never let our nation return to the hateful days of racism run amok.

               Did the murders result in the failure of the criminal justice system?  No, they just lead to the riots that proved that the “system” was not capable of supporting the players involved in trying to control massive actions of civil disobedience.  The criminal justice system cannot handle such massive disobedience uprisings, and, frankly, it doesn’t handle very well the victimization of the victim of a criminal act which continues throughout the processing of a criminal case.  The survivors of a murder victim still have to sit among the friends and family of the murderer throughout the trial process; the rape victim still must sit among the friends and family of the rapist; the victims of a Bernard   Madoff                and an Allen Stanford, still lose their investment and security for their retirement; the farmers and ranchers of  south eastern Colorado still risk loss of their property (and thus their retirement) at the hands of  indifferent federal and state governments which induced the landowners to use the easement programs and then stand idly by while fraudulent interests prepare to take advantage of the landowners and take ownership of their property.

                 Some things never change.  Some of them good----“Hair” the musical which was created during the late 60s, a most violent time in our history with the Viet Nam war and the Kennedy, King and Kennedy murders featured, has now been restored to Broadway.  The actors and actresses are stressing the healing which they say is inherent in the music of “Hair”---music such as “the dawning of the age of Acquarius”, the melody and words still as true today as then.

               When one speaks of Justice,  my mind will always return to Justice?  My Ass.

Today being the day that a snipers bullet robbed us of more time with one of the greatest leaders in history, we thought it fitting that we dedicate the site today to him: 

A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

History is indeed made up of significant events which shape our future and outstanding leaders who influence our destiny.

Martin Luther King's contributions to our history place him in this inimitable position. In his short life, Martin Luther King was instrumental in helping us realize and rectify those unspeakable flaws which were tarnishing the name of America. The events which took place in and around his life were earth shattering, for they represented an America which was hostile and quite different from America as we see it today.

Martin Luther King, Jr. catapulted to fame when he came to the assistance of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery, Alabama Black seamstress who refused to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus to a White passenger. In those days American Blacks were confined to positions of second class citizenship by restrictive laws and customs. To break these laws would mean subjugation and humiliation by the police and the legal system. Beatings, imprisonment and sometimes death were waiting for those who defied the System.

Black Americans needed a Martin Luther King, but above all America needed him. The significant qualities of this special man cannot be underestimated nor taken for granted. Within a span of 13 years from 1955 to his death in 1968 he was able to expound, expose, and extricate America from many wrongs. His tactics of protest involved non-violent passive resistance to racial injustice. It was the right prescription for our country, and it was right on time. Hope in America was waning on the part of many Black Americans, but Martin Luther King, Jr. provided a candle along with a light. He also provided this nation with a road map so that all people could locate and share together in the abundance of this great democracy.

We honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. because he showed us the way to mend those broken fences and to move on in building this land rather than destroying it. He led campaign after campaign in the streets of America and on to the governor's mansion - even to the White House - in an effort to secure change. Today Black Americans have federal legislation which provides access and legal protection in the areas of public accommodations, housing, voting rights, schools, and transportation. These rights were not easily won, nor readily accepted, but the good will and conscience of an enormous spectrum of our society both Black and White said "Move On."

Thank you Dr. King for being the drum major who was able and ready to lead our nation to greater heights through love and peace.

Another comment agreeing with Andys point on the Moats story by  Michael Wooten:

comment: I have been a Law Enforcement Officer for over 11 years.  I have walked up to cars and had guns pulled on me.  I have tried to help people and been shot and shot at.  I have had knives pulled on me and been in several hand to hand situations.  The job I love is one of uncertainty and yes at times grave danger.  All that set aside there comes a time during every contact when you as the law enforcement officer knows, or at least has an idea, of what kind of individual your dealing with.  When you are trying to stop a vehicle and that vehicle fails to yield the adrenalin pumps up and you have no idea what you are dealing with.  There is also the thought of public safety as the suspect vehicle and the patrol car(s) are traveling through stop lights, stop signs and other traffic control devices at high rates of speed.  I was ok with the officers actions until the vehicles stopped at the hospital and it became very aware that there was a medical emergency.  After it became clear and it was very clear that a family member was dying the officers conduct was unprofessional and embarrassing.

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