The German shepherd police dog, placed in service two weeks ago, got zapped with electricity at 3 a.m. Friday when the man he was arresting bit into a 220-volt electrical cord, with the announced plan of killing anyone who touched him, police say.
No one died, but Adalberto Cardoso, 39, of Sumner Street, will face a raft of charges, including cruelty to animals, once he is discharged from the hospital.
An employee at McDonalds, 255 Lonsdale Ave., called for help at 3 a.m. after Cardoso used his fists to break open a plate glass window and enter the business, police allege.
The first police officers on the scene report seeing Cardoso inside McDonalds, wearing only boxer shorts and his blood that covered him from his head to his feet.
Police surrounded McDonalds and ordered Cardoso to surrender, officers report.
Cardoso, instead, jumped out of a broken window and fought with police, who report they could not get a good grip on him because of his strength and the blood and sweat that covered him.
He also fought with the police dog, punching it in the mouth and neck, police allege. Cardoso was able to crawl back to the broken window and Officer Ernest Pendergrass, who handles the police dog, pulled back the dog, fearing it would be injured by the jagged glass still in the window frame.
Cardoso escaped and jumped back into McDonalds through the broken window, police allege.
Police entered to find Cardoso standing on top of the milkshake machine, officers allege. As they approached, police say, Cardoso turned the machine on and began throwing handfuls of milkshake at the police and the police dog, officers allege.
Cardoso was able to pull the machine from the wall, police say. When Bak, the police dog, pulled him to the ground, Cardoso announced: "I'm going to kill us all," and bit into the electrical cord, police allege.
The dog, Officer Jeffrey Davis, Officer Robert Cardente and Officer Dino Giorgio all received electrical shocks because they were wrestling with Cardoso as he bit the cord, police allege.
Officer Pendergrass pulled back Bak, his partner, and reports he struck Cardoso on the shoulder and back with his fighting baton, causing him to drop the electrical cord from his mouth. Police say they dragged Cardoso away from the electrical cord and outlet and handcuffed him.
Besides cruelty to animals Cardoso is to be charged with breaking into McDonalds, assault on police officers and resisting arrest.
He was admitted to Memorial Hospital because of the deep cuts to his hands and forearms, apparently caused when he broke through the plate glass window, police report.
The dog was not injured, but three police officers were treated for cuts and bruises at Memorial Hospital.
Because the breaking and entering charge is a felony, Cardoso will face charges in Superior Court.
Pregnant woman among 12 addicts held at orgy A WOMAN who is eight months pregnant was among 12 drug addicts caught having a sex party when police surprised them on Sunday, according to Harian Metro. The addicts, aged between 15 and 30, including five women, were high on syabu on the 17th floor of an empty building along Jalan Pudu in Kuala Lumpur.
The daily said the group took syabu to increase their stamina for sex. Dang Wangi police chief Asst Comm Kamal Pasha Jamal said when the police raided the place, one of the suspects, in his teens, wanted to jump off the building but was too frightened to do so. Thirty policemen and Rela volunteers were involved in the operation.
A bar waitress checking to see if a woman was legally old enough to drink was handed her own stolen driver's license, which was reported missing weeks earlier, police said. "The odds of this waitress recovering her own license defy calculation," police Capt. Guy Turner said Monday.
Maria Bergan, 23, of Lakewood, was charged Sunday night with identity theft and receiving stolen property. She was arrested at her home in suburban Cleveland and was jailed in Westlake to await a court appearance. The 22-year-old waitress, whose name was not released, called police last week and said she had been handed her own stolen driver's license by a woman trying to prove she was 21. The woman, who became suspicious of the delay as the waitress went to call police, fled the Moosehead Saloon, but her companion provided her name.
The waitress said she had lost her wallet July 9 at a bar in Lakewood. The victim also had a credit card stolen. The stolen card has been used to make $1,000 in purchases, Turner said.
#2
I hope she got her beer first, geez. Were not getting the important part of the sequence here - darn MSM! Women files lawsuit for being refused drink in local bar, cites profiling. Evil George Bush daughters cited in lawsuit.
#3
Similar thing happened to my daughter a few weeks ago. A girl at the bar used her stolen ID to try to by booze. The bartender kept the ID and called the police. The girl was under age and didn not look like my daughter. Stranger than fiction.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
08/01/2006 12:41 Comments ||
Top||
Sylver B'lake is getting in touch with his "inner elf."
Oh, how cute. He's got an apostrophe in his name...
The 27-year-old man from Fayetteville, Ark., dressed in what appears to be some sort of homosexual futuristic Robin Hood costume, is aiming a chunk of finely carved eucalyptus branch dead smack at the chest of Koe Jacsmi of Seattle. The 16-year-old girl in the extremely flared brown pants with the orange tiger stripes is taking it all in, absorbing every sound B'lake can blow through his didgeridoo. "It energized my chakras very much," said Jacsmi, 16. "When he did it on my head, my crown chakra just went off."
"My pants just crawled down my legs!"
B'lake and Jacsmi had never met before Sunday, when they came across one another at the Faerieworlds Festival that wrapped up its two-day run at Secret House Vineyards in Veneta. They were just two of several thousand costumed dipsy doodles folk who came to experience an event that's been held somewhere in the West for five of the last six years, and for the second straight year here in Lane County.
Discovered there was money in it, did they?
Emilio Miller-Lopez of Eugene, co-founder of the event along with his wife, Kelly Miller-Lopez, said festivalgoers from 42 states and six countries purchased tickets for the event online.
Hyphens add class to otherwise run-of-the-mill names. And Emilio sounds so much more romantic than Emile.
... And you don't see grown men walking around with Hobbit sticks every day. Or other men with twig-thin legs, wearing skin-tight tights, and dancing like, well, faeries with foliage stapled on their backs...
"There's something for everyone," said Kelly Miller-Lopez, who moved to Eugene from Arizona - where the first two Faerieworld festivals were held in Prescott and Sedona - with her husband in 2004. "And we've put a lot of attention into making sure that's true."
Robert Gould, president of Imaginosis, a Los Angeles-based transmedia arts company that specializes in working with artists of fantasy-based productions, has worked with the Miller-Lopezes to produce all five of the festivals. "The one thing that's always been amazing about these shows is that we don't tell anyone to come in costume," said Gould, who was wearing a black T-shirt with the words "World of Froud" and a black kilt. "That's one of the biggest surprises we have. People really want to be in this world."
One of the big draws at this year's festival was husband-and-wife team Brian and Wendy Froud, internationally best-selling artists, authors and film designers whose work is the artistic inspiration for the festival. Brian Froud worked with the late Jim Henson of The Muppets on the fantasy feature films "The Dark Crystal" and "Labyrinth," and Wendy Froud worked as a sculptor and puppet builder for Henson.
I've always liked faeries," said Romero, "because they're magic and their world is incredible. So opposite of the one we live in every day.
Jacsmi had both artists autograph her skin just below the collarbone. "You can be yourself and no one will judge you," Jacsmi said of why she loves the festival. "That's why you come to any festival." But this one has "faeries all around," she said. "You don't get to see that all the time."
No, you don't. Some of us are grateful for that.
So true. And you don't see grown men walking around with Hobbit sticks every day. Or other men with twig-thin legs, wearing skin-tight tights, and dancing like, well, faeries with foliage stapled on their backs. Or a woman laying in cool mud, blending in so well with the troll sculptures in the "Mud Faery Sculpture Garden" that you have to strain to see that she's there.
Nor do you usually see three generations of women walking around with purple wings. "Faeries are kind of her thing," said Sonja Ingeroi of her mother, Saundra Romero. The Roseburg mother and daughter came Sunday with Ingeroi's 8-year-old daughter, Ursula Evans, whose face was painted green with purplish-blue markings.
"I've always liked faeries," said Romero, "because they're magic and their world is incredible. So opposite of the one we live in every day."
Ursula, who has taken in multiple viewings of "Labyrinth," the 1986 film that starred the Froud's son, Toby Froud, as the baby kidnapped by the "King of the Goblins" (David Bowie), took a break by reading a "Betty & Veronica" comic book on a blanket. But she likes faeries better, she said. "They're pretty much the same as my grandma," she said of Romero. "I like everything that flies."
Posted by: Fred ||
08/01/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
"I've always liked faeries," said Romero, "because they're magic and their world is incredible. So opposite of the one we live in every day."
According to myths, they're also amoral, blood-thirsty, and self-centered to an extreme.
Oh, that's why these nutcases like them. Same reason they like Castro, Mugabe, Hezbollah, etc.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
08/01/2006 6:09 Comments ||
Top||
#3
And I thought the Society for Creative Anachrtonism guys were "out there!"
Posted by: Mike ||
08/01/2006 7:05 Comments ||
Top||
#4
"Faeries are kind of her thing," said Sonja Ingeroi of her mother, Saundra Romero.
Saundra's husband George was fond of gut munching zombies, a fascination that had launched his movie career and helped pay for his wife's decades of counceling.
THE father of an Australian woman has described the final act of a heroic young skydiving instructor, who calmly told his daughter their plane would crash and embraced her to protect her from the impact.
The instructor and five other people died when their plane hit a power pole and nosedived into a tree soon after take-off from an airport near St Louis, in the US state of Missouri, on Saturday.
Investigators believe the plane suffered an engine failure. A witness reported seeing its right engine in flames moments after take-off.
Two people, including 21-year-old Australian tourist Kimberley Dear, were seriously injured and remain in a US hospital.
Ms Dear's father Bill, of Sydenham in Melbourne's north-west, today said the final moments of 22-year-old sky diving instructor Robert Cook's life had been truly heroic.
He's a hero. There's no other way I can describe it, Mr Dear told the Channel 9's Today show, from his daughter's bedside.
It was utterly amazing.
When he realised the plane was actually going to crash, he grabbed Kimberley and he calmly talked to her and he told her that the plane was going to crash.
(He) told her what to expect and what to do and kept her calm and focused her attention on him and what he was saying rather than what was happening around her.
Kim was going to do a tandem jump with Robert so that she had the harness for the tandem jump on as Robert did as well, so Robert actually clipped the harness together and as the plane was coming down he put his arms around her and pulled her close.
As he pulled her close, her head rested on his shoulders. He put his head against hers to stop it flopping around.
He said to her: 'As the plane is about to hit the ground, make sure you're on top of me so that I'll take the force of the impact'.
"The plane actually hit, they believe, a power pole or a power line and it went into a vertical situation, and she became a little bit disoriented, but she felt Robert actually twist his body around until Kim was on top of him and when the plane hit the ground.
He took the full force of the impact.
Kimberley suffered pressured vertebrae, severe muscle tears around her spine, a broken pelvis and collar bone, many cuts and abrasions, concussion and severe bruising, Mr Dear said.
Kimberley's sister Tracey Dear, speaking in Melbourne, said Mr Cook must have known he was giving his life for Kimberley's as the plane plunged to earth.
There's nothing. I can't even put it into words but the only thing I can think of is saying thank you so much, she said.
I can't believe that in this world when so many people are so jaded that there are people out there like that.
He met Kimberley, as far as I know, that day. I would do that for her but I can't believe that a stranger who just met her would knowingly give up his life for her.
I just want his family to know we appreciate that from the bottom of our heart.
Kimberly is not expected to return to Australia for up to 10 weeks, Tracey told Nine.
The father plans to fly to the US attend the funeral and tell everyone that he was a hero
Extreme weather conditions have produced a rare cloud formation over Australia's Mawson station in Antarctica.
Meteorological officer Renae Baker captured spectacular images of the nacreous clouds, otherwise known as polar stratospheric clouds, late last month.
Reflecting like an airborne mother-of-pearl shell, the cloud colours are produced when fading light at sunset passes through water-ice crystals blown along a strong jet of stratospheric air more than 10 kilometres above the ground.
A weather balloon measured temperatures down to minus 87 degrees celsius when the photographs were taken.
"That's about as cold as the lowest temperatures ever recorded on the surface of the Earth," Ms Baker said.
"Amazingly, the winds at this height were blowing at nearly 230 kilometres per hour."
Australian Antarctic Division atmospheric scientist Andrew Klekociuk said the clouds were seldom seen but could have long-ranging effects.
"These clouds are more than just a curiosity," he said.
"They reveal extreme conditions in the atmosphere and promote chemical changes that lead to destruction of vital stratospheric ozone."
#1
WHEN CLOUDS ATTACK, or NANCREOUS - THEY AREN'T
THE NIMBUS YOU THINK THEY ARE, or CLOUDS, WHY DO THEY HATE US SO? A future episode for History Channel's MEGADISASTERS. These clouds wouldn't hate us or harm us so much iff only America would adopt OWG and the right kind/brand of Perfection-centric, anti-sovereign national Socialism These clouds wouldn't threaten or harm anybody iff they + eeeevery other type of cloud had no rights, and no privately-owned guns, to do so. The Failed Left + MSM just know Dubya, Rummy, and Rove are behind the actions of these angry delinquent independence/violence-minded Male Brute abuser molester imperialist clouds, they just know it.
#6
Aliens? Ptui...it's all Bush's fault(tm), if only he'd signed Kyoto! And, I imagine that even though it's the coldest temps on record, it's somehow tied to global warming to the gaia freaks!
Posted by: BA ||
08/01/2006 13:31 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Halliburton's Scary Clouds Division could not be reached for comment.
Republican Sen. George Allen has a 16-point lead over Democratic challenger Jim Webb in the latest independent statewide poll, published Sunday, but a fifth of the electorate is still undecided. The election is closely watched nationally as an off-year referendum on the embattled Bush presidency because Allen, one of Bush's most reliable Senate allies, is preparing a 2008 presidential bid. Last year, Allen voted in support of the White House more than 95 percent of the time.
Forty-eight percent backed Allen and 32 percent supported Webb in the Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. survey of registered voters likely to vote in the Nov. 7 election. However, 20 percent of the 625 respondents surveyed statewide by telephone July 25-27 said they had not decided between Allen, a former governor seeking a second Senate term, and Webb, a former Republican who was President Reagan's Navy secretary. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/01/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I am a Virginia registered voter. If my gut feeling is anything to go by, Allen is going to tear Webb up. George is popular in VA; most things Democrat aren't. Kaine wouldn't have gotten elected if the Republicans hadn't run an absolutely horrible candidate against him.
Posted by: mac ||
08/01/2006 0:55 Comments ||
Top||
Oh boy, it appears that the great comedic genius of our times, the Saturday Night Live veteran, the sophomoric muse of the left, Al Franken, the guiding power behind the faltering Air America, is testing the waters for a run for the US Senate after moving his unique radio show to Minneapolis from the Big Apple, where wags said, his unique brand of humor was losing some steam with the loss of WLIB-AM, the erstwhile flagship station.
And it is suspected that the imminent failure and final disappearance of Air America is driving Mr. Franken west to his destiny in the US Senate. After all, why would a keen intelligence, a man of such wit and humor, a person so genetically designed for the hurly burly of the big city, seek solace in Minneapolis, the home of Billy Graham? Perhaps Al needs a job with vast guaranteed riches, the ability to trade stocks with non-public information, the ability take his war chest into his dotage, and a grand retirement funded by the very people Mr. Franken has humored and fleeced for so many years -- a sweet irony indeed. You know, the folks the Democrat politicos call the wealthy, the saps like you and me who make up the waning 51% who still pay an income tax. And the politicos that Mr. Franken would fit right in with, worships, and prays will succeed in redistributing all of our hard earned wealth but not his.
And only three final comedic acts remain for this seasoned vaudevillian; the need to shake down those liberal fat cats he has so successfully groomed for many years, to overcome those few negatives his name connotes, and the final act of grand guignol around the ballot box in Minnesota. But will the folks in the North Star State buy into the off color one liners, the outright fiction, obscene jokes, threats to kill the President, that Donald Rumsfeld "ought to be tortured," and that Rush Limbaugh has been accused of "being a Nazi," which Air America and Mr. Franken's hand picked crew of disc jockeys, like the irrepressible Randi Rhodes and Rachel Maddow, have pumped into a reluctant troposphere, groaning under the weight of their worthless truck?
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
08/01/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
O'Reilly reported that he hit up Babs Streisand for a campaign donation. She gave him a whole $500.
Posted by: john ||
08/01/2006 09:11 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
In Pakistan, however, some 60 per cent of marriages are between first cousins; the frequency in Bradford and Leeds is thought to be comparable. The result is that clinical genetics units serving the British Pakistani community see a range and frequency of genetic disorders unknown elsewhere in the country.
60 percent... Gawd...
Posted by: john ||
08/01/2006 9:19 Comments ||
Top||
#2
IIRC, I've read here in RB, many moons ago, that 70% of soodi newly-wed are blood-related (this was in an article about the gvt willing to regulate this); also, from a separate article, the jordanian % is 50%, more or less the average in the region. Don't know about north africans, though extended families of "cousins" (french arab "cousin" greeting = african american "brother" are common too).
This could go a long way towards explaining what is, to us, irrational and psychopathic behavior amongst the normal population and the embracement of a fascistic pseudo-religious death cult which blames everything wrong with their own society on anyone else.
That's not excuse for the Islamonazi's, but it sure could go a long way towards explaining it to westerners.
AN Australian scientist credited with a major role in eradicating smallpox says humanity may not be able to wipe out any more infectious diseases - including bird flu.
Professor Frank Fenner, who launched his autobiography in Canberra today, said the world has changed since he announced smallpox eradication at the World Health Assembly in 1980.
The 91-year-old, whose other major achievement was controlling Australia's rabbit plague using the myxomatosis virus which he famously injected into himself to prove its safety to humans said smallpox was the only disease scientists had wiped out.
Prof Fenner chaired the global committee charged with determining if smallpox had been eradicated, and his knowledge was instrumental in demonstrating that no animals carried the virus.
Ridding the world of smallpox was made easier because it could be diagnosed easily from a distinctive skin rash, whereas the majority of people infected with the other most likely candidates for eradication - polio and rubella - display little or no symptoms, he said.
Prof Fenner said smallpox cost $200 million to eradicate, while polio had already cost $4 billion and was still present in several countries.
"Despite enormous efforts, really astonishing efforts, it's very hard to get rid of it entirely," he said.
"The world has got so much more difficult.
"There was no air travel to speak of, or not much, in the smallpox days compared to nowadays.
"And that is why we are so worried about the possibility of this H5N1 (bird) flu, because if it retains its virulence and is transmissible from person to person, then it will be around the world whatever you do about it."
Prof Fenner, who won the Prime Minister's Prize for Science in 2002 and the Japan Prize in 1988, said influenza was humanity's greatest disease threat.
"The 1918 epidemic is said to have killed between 20 and 40 million people, and this is much more virulent that that," he said.
"That only had a five per cent mortality, and there was no air travel.
"If it got into Africa, there is no way in which you could get vaccination running throughout Africa. It would be hard enough in the industrialised countries to get it going."
Prof Fenner's 23rd book, which also details the life of his father Charles, covers almost a century of the family's involvement in Australia's research community.
Prof Fenner, who remains a visiting fellow at Australian National University's John Curtin School of Medical Research, said his father a geologist, science writer and geographer as well as a state director of education was his inspiration to become a medical researcher.
#1
To stop eating dead carrion birds would a good place to start, unless Commie factories are gonna explode, AGAIN, due to any future secret FRANKEN-BIRD projects.
Dr. Fenner is a hero, but the article is the usual media science drive-by that cruises past the details. Money quote: "The world has got so much more difficult." Indeed. Polio would already be gone if it were not for the evil stupidity of Islamic leaders stopping vacination programs in the countries where polio is still endemic.
Eradicating smallpox was a great accomplishment for the UN. Let's give credit where credit is due, even if it was a couple of decades ago.
Influenza is a harder problem because the virus mutates so easily that any vaccine must be made specifically for that strain. We see the same problem every year with plain vanilla flu vaccines.
#3
Not only will air travel cause the rapid spread of bird flu, so many people are living in refugee camps and other overcrouded conditions like illegal immigrants packed into small rooms. The bird flu has a great chance of stopping civilization dead in it's tracks. I hope the US government will tend to assure the survivorship of Americans, but somehow I doubt it.
The first person to call for the eradication of smallpox was Jenner, but the first modern call was from the Soviet Union in 1958. An international team was set up by an American, Donald Henderson, a heck of a guy.
The eradication program legitimized the WHO, worldwide, and its credibility is good enough to go anywhere, even North Korea, for give and take with their medical services.
#5
wxjames: A lot of people have been working overtime to minimize the US casualties.
Stuff in our favor: the US is underpopulated, good public health and sanitation, good public understanding of hygiene, good communications to get information out, and high disease fear factor.
Problems: rapid spread because of good transportation, push shortage of all medical supplies (almost no reserves), ability to produce only 30M vaccinations within six months of obtaining the 'actual' pathogen.
What we have done. There is now a worldwide system of alert/notification, and now even many third world nations have high quality outbreak response. That is an amazing achievement right there.
The US has changed its vaccination policy to reduce the spread of the avian flu. Instead of the "old, very young and infirm", the emphasis will be "school aged children (the best flu vector), and 'ring' vaccinations around outbreak areas." This is an older technique used in other epidemics in past.
Some individual States and some cities are creating effective plans with novel and intelligent preparations, such as plans to create civilian door-to-door auxiliaries, for para-medical and body recovery purposes.
Other plans include traditional quarantines, isolation areas in airports, telephone hotlines, and computer-made mass phone dialings for public notifications of recorded messages.
Even some corporations are getting into the act, with plans for how to continue operations with staff reductions of maybe 50%, and other problems.
San Diego: With a speed and decisiveness that surprised some, the Senate on Tuesday approved a plan to transfer the land beneath the Mount Soledad war memorial to federal control in an effort to avoid a court-ordered removal of the cross that stands there.
The Senate's unanimous vote sent the cross-transfer plan to President Bush for his expected signature. It creates what some consider an entirely new dynamic in the 17-year effort to save the cross, but which others say is a hopeless attempt to preserve a symbol on city land that courts have said unconstitutionally favors one religion over others.
Obviously we're delighted, said Charles LiMandri, an attorney advising a group of Soledad cross supporters. I think even the more liberal side of the Democratic party has to recognize that there is widespread, grassroots support for preserving veterans memorials in general, and the Soledad cross in particular.
James McElroy, the attorney representing atheist Philip Paulson who first sued to remove the cross on the grounds it amounts to an unconstitutional preference of the Christian religion over others said the bill is still unconstitutional.
I guess the Senate has a short memory, he said. You've got a local issue here. What business does the federal government have getting involved?
The legislation would preserve the 29-foot-tall cross on Mount Soledad by vesting title to the memorial in the federal government and having the Secretary of Defense administer it. The Department of Defense would manage the monument. The Mount Soledad Memorial Association, a private group that built the current cross in 1954 to honor Korean War veterans, would continue to maintain the site.
Today's vote represents a significant step forward, said El Cajon Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Republican who joined his two GOP colleagues from San Diego to write the cross-transfer legislation, which passed the House late last month. The action taken by both the House and Senate reaffirm the overwhelming desire of the San Diego community to keep the memorial exactly where it has proudly stood for over 50 years.
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, who has fought to keep the cross atop 800-foot-high Mount Soledad, said through spokesman Fred Sainz that he was grateful for the resonance with which the Senate spoke on the issue.
I think that the Senate was able to put political correctness aside for a moment and understand this truly is a war memorial, Sainz said. The fact there that a cross is part of it is an issue that senators of all religious faiths were able to come to terms with and accept.
In July the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked a lower court order forcing the city to remove the cross by yesterday (Aug.1) on grounds it violated the state constitution's ban on government support of religion.
The deadline was set by U.S. District Court Judge Gordon Thompson Jr., who first ordered the cross removed in 1991. It would have imposed a $5,000-a-day fine for failing to comply.
Senate approval came less than two weeks after the House voted 349-74 on July 19 to seize the land and give it to the Defense Department. After some brief wrangling among senators over who would carry the Hunter legislation through the upper chamber, the bill was placed on a so-called consent calendar, which indicated it had little opposition. It's a hot potato, and I suspect the Senate would just as soon pass it and get it to the president and let the courts deal with it, said Charlie Berwanger, attorney for the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, which has fought to keep the cross where it is.
McElroy said he didn't expect California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both Democrats, to embrace the measure as they did.
I didn't expect them to go with this fad, McElroy said. But this has become good fodder for politicians in an election year.
Feinstein and Boxer tend to be staunch church-state separation advocates. But both also support a plan to spend federal money to preserve California missions that hold church services because, the senators argue, the missions have historical significance.
The Mount Soledad cross has been a great source of hope and inspiration for decades, and it has important historical significance to veterans and San Diegans alike, Feinstein said.
Boxer said, I believe this monument to be a memorial to our veterans, and therefore should be allowed to stay. The Hunter bill was drafted in a way that is consistent with the latest court action.
Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also supported the Senate action, saying that allowing this landmark to be destroyed would send the wrong message to our nation's veterans. Should the Mount Soledad cross end up in federal hands, its future likely will rest on interpretations of the federal Constitution, not California's. Cross supporters say the courts have been more willing to allow religious symbols on public land on federal constitutional grounds, particularly if the symbol has historic or cultural significance.
Last year, a pair of 5-4 rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in separate cases involving the Ten Commandments established fuzzy guidelines: The court found that a display inside a Kentucky courthouse was unconstitutional, but that a 6-foot granite monument outside the Texas Capitol was all right.
The time may be ripe for the court to revisit the issue, said LiMandri. They'll take this case because the law needs clarity.
Cross foes note that the courts have ordered the removal of other crosses based on federal constitutional grounds. Five years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union successfully sued to remove a 5-foot-tall cross of metal tubing in the Mojave National Preserve, although the removal is on appeal.
I don't think the Supreme Court is going to rewrite the Constitution or the last 50 years of precedent, McElroy said. This is not like the Ten Commandments cases. The Latin cross is a powerful symbol of religion.
For now, congressional action does not interfere with various lawsuits being pursued in state and federal courts.
In state court, cross supporters are appealing a decision by a Superior Court judge that invalidated Proposition A, a measure approved last fall by 76 percent of San Diego voters that would have donated the cross to the federal government, but which the judge said violated the state Constitution.
In federal court, the city is appealing Thompson's order to remove the cross or be fined. That case is to be heard in October.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/01/2006 20:58 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
when's the last time you saw an unanimous vote in the Senate defending a Christian symbol? Right before an election, I bet...
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/01/2006 21:17 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Unlike the imperial judiciary, the Senate was moved to be subject, as Jefferson wrote, to the consent of the govern. It's way past time that the judiciary also be brought into a full consent position. Stangely enough, I believe in the people, who are just as qualified to read and understand what the writers really intended the Constitution to say. Just not for elites anymore.
#1
Why link to anything from the BBC? Of course Bush didn't 'win over' the NAACP. The glee with which folks like the BBC point to American political conflicts makes me want to vomit.
#2
Exactly what did the delegates expect President Bush to give them? The field is level PLAY! The only people who get left behind are those that dont play. If you want to reminisce about how your ancestors were treated then we can all tell stories of conquest and slavery so just get over it, move on, and makes something of your life.
#3
"He's [Bush] the born-again Christian, he should be the one to press Congress to pass bipartisan legislation that would be a national apology for slavery,"
While hes at it he should apologize for piracy. Lord knows the tragic legacy that still haunts us today.
#4
I wonder if those in the media realize the connection between apolgies and lawsuits. I know Jessie and Al Sharpton realize the connection.
Did the United Kingdom ever apologize for slavery? Yeah they got rid of it, and the Royal Navy attempted to stop the slave trade (just as the US fought the Civil War to end slavery a tad later) but the Virginias were a British colony with slaves.
Did the citizens of Rome every apologize for the slaves held by their Republic and later Empire?
Does anyone care that there is still an active slave trade in parts of the Islamic world, East Europe and Asia? Bush actually tried to stand up against that.
#5
The debt of slavery was repaid in blood to the tune of 620,000 or thereabouts. According to the 1860 Census, there were a total of 31,443,321 people living here at the time.
Nearly 2% of the population of the country killed by wound or disease. (That would be like 6 million Americans getting killed in the same time frame today.)
#6
Any "descendants of slaves" will collect reparation after I'm compensated for the loss of my ancestors in the Civil War. In fact, I think I'm owed money. Gimme them Earned Income Credit refunds, dammit!
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/01/2006 21:12 Comments ||
Top||
#7
KATRINA-GATE + SHARPTONISM > Whites, Asians, Hispanics and non-African Americans can do what they want, but African-Americans have the fundamental right to subsist, receive and live off Government-based public assistance FOREVER, FOREVER AND EVER. WHATEVER THE WHITEWASH, IT COMES DOWN TO UNIVERSAL SOCIALISM + UNIVERSAL WELFARISM-NANNY STATE, aka FREE MONEY = OPPORTUNITY PROVIDED BY THIRD PARTIES OR THE STATE TO IMPROVING ONE'S SELF BY DOING NOTHING, AND BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR NOTHING SAVE TRANSFERRING ONE'S BURDENS OR LIABILITIES UNTO SOMEBODY ELSE. * DREW CAREY SHOW > "This is America, D *** It, and you know what that means -SOMEBODY ELSE IS RESPONSIBLE [for my actions/decisions/problems]"!?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A WOMAN who is eight months pregnant was among 12 drug addicts caught having a sex party when police surprised them on Sunday, according to Harian Metro. The addicts, aged between 15 and 30, including five women, were high on syabu on the 17th floor of an empty building along Jalan Pudu in Kuala Lumpur. 
Sylver B'lake is getting in touch with his "inner elf." 
Republican Sen. 
Oh boy, it appears that the great comedic genius of our times, the Saturday Night Live veteran, the sophomoric muse of the left, 
