York - Workers at a British factory making French fries were evacuated two days running last week after bomb parts turned up in potatoes imported from France and Belgium, the site of battles in World War 1 and 2. The Scarborough plant, owned by Canada's McCain Foods, the world's largest producer of frozen fries, was emptied on Friday after a worker spotted a shell tip among the potatoes as they were being cleaned for slicing. "The police were called and the bomb squad advised a 100m exclusion zone should be set up," said a McCain spokesperson.
On Saturday, an entire hand grenade was discovered in the potatoes and the plant in northern England was evacuated again. A spokesperson for North Yorkshire police said "The army took the device away and blew it up in a controlled explosion in a field nearby."
Six years after Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the presidency to Republican George W. Bush, there's a new move afoot in the California Legislature and other states to ensure that such things never happen again. The linchpin is a proposed "interstate compact," designed to guarantee that presidents will be selected by popular vote, without amending the U.S. Constitution or eliminating the Electoral College.
Sacramento - and the others who sign up for this premeditated act of sedition - are worthy of whatever happens to them. What a den of thieves and traitors.
Posted by: random styling ||
05/22/2006 17:30 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Read the comments at Lucianne, here's the 1st one:
This is not good. It allows the top 15 cities to elect the next President.
#3
Courtesy of BugMeNot, the full article:
---------------------------------------
Six years after Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the presidency to Republican George W. Bush, there's a new move afoot in the California Legislature and other states to ensure that such things never happen again.
The linchpin is a proposed "interstate compact," designed to guarantee that presidents will be selected by popular vote, without amending the U.S. Constitution or eliminating the Electoral College.
Assemblyman Tom Umberg, a Santa Ana Democrat who chairs the Assembly Election and Redistricting Committee, said the basic premise is understandable even to children.
"When you're in first grade, if the person who got the second-most votes became class leader, the kids would recognize that this is not a fair system," he said.
Umberg's Assembly Bill 2948, proposing such a compact, passed the Assembly's elections and appropriations committees on party-line votes, with Republicans opposed.
"We have a system that's worked effectively for more than 200 years," said Sal Russo, a GOP political consultant. "We probably should be very hesitant to change that."
John Koza, an official of National Popular Vote, which is pushing the proposal, said sentiment has not split along party lines in other states.
"I don't think anyone can convincingly put their finger on any partisan advantage," said Koza, a consulting professor at Stanford University.
Though Republicans disproportionately benefited from the Electoral College in 2000, when Bush edged Gore despite getting 544,000 fewer votes, Democrats nearly turned the tables four years later.
In 2004, Democrat John Kerry would have defeated Bush - despite 3 million fewer votes nationwide - if he had garnered Ohio's electoral votes by swaying 60,000 more GOP voters to his side.
AB 2948 would commit California to a compact in which each participating state would cast all its electoral votes for the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes nationwide.
The compact would not become effective until its member states control a majority of the Electoral College's 538 votes.
The binding commitment would be enforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court, Umberg said.
Any state could become a member of the compact, and any state could withdraw from the group - except during the final six months of a president's term.
Besides California, legislation to create a compact was introduced this year in Colorado, Missouri, Illinois and Louisiana.
Proponents are pushing to have similar bills in all 50 states next year.
America's founding fathers created the current system, in which each state determines how its votes will be cast in the Electoral College, which ultimately elects the president.
California and 47 other states have adopted a "winner-take-all" approach, committing their entire slate of electors to the candidate who receives the most votes statewide.
Nebraska and Maine allocate most of their electoral votes by congressional district.
Umberg argues that California is at a severe disadvantage under the "winner-take-all" system because its lopsided voter registration persuades presidential candidates from both parties to spend their campaign time - and money - in "battleground" states.
California is considered safely Democratic, with the GOP trailing by 8 percentage points in voter registration.
In 2004, for example, Kerry lost the national vote but won by 10 percentage points in California.
Supporters of AB 2948 claim it will revitalize elections and increase turnout.
In states with tilted voter registration, such as California, votes cast by the minority party will gain in importance as part of a much larger pool nationwide, proponents said.
"A voter in Rhode Island is as important as a voter in California, I think that's the key," said Theis Finlev of Common Cause, which supports AB 2948.
California, the nation's most populous state, suddenly would take center stage, Umberg said.
Rather than focus largely on key issues in smaller battleground states, presidential candidates would have to court Californians, too.
"You couldn't afford to have somebody else carry the state by 6 million votes," Umberg said.
Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said an interstate compact would remove the stigma attached to a ballot-box loser who becomes president.
"I think Americans are ready for a change," he said of AB 2948.
Under the proposed compact, however, a state could find itself compelled to cast all its electoral votes to a presidential candidate resoundingly rejected by its own residents.
Critics of AB 2948 say the Electoral College plays an important role in forcing presidents to build geographic coalitions.
Assemblyman Michael Villines, R-Clovis, said sidestepping the Electoral College would make have-nots of small states and rural areas.
"The small guy gets a voice only through the Electoral College process," Villines said.
California and nine other states account for more than 50 percent of the nation's population. Wayne Johnson, a GOP consultant, said a compact would alter campaign strategy.
"What you'd do is go into the heavily Republican areas or heavily Democratic areas and spend your money to run up the score in popular vote," he said. "You'd leave out whole sections of the country."
Supporters and opponents disagree on how a compact would affect all sorts of political issues, such as whether it would incite vote-count fights in numerous states or reduce the ballot-box leverage of racial and ethnic groups.
"This is the kind of scheme that would keep political junkies happily awake at night, thinking of ways it could go wrong," said Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College.
But Umberg said the biggest hurdle for AB 2948 may be a reluctance by lawmakers to change fundamental political tenets.
"They're (legislators) by virtue of how the process worked in the past," he said.
Posted by: random styling ||
05/22/2006 17:41 Comments ||
Top||
#4
So, the usual Donk gig: if you lose, then change the system.
Posted by: random styling ||
05/22/2006 17:45 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Don't worry they will attach an amendment to grant civil rights to teensi flies and then they bill will die. How come the Donks were not all that hot to change the system when Nixon got screwed by JFK?
#6
I say go for it. Only the most leftist Democrat controlled states will sign up. It will be delicious to see the look on California electors faces when they are all pledged to support the Republican candidate.
Posted by: ed ||
05/22/2006 18:13 Comments ||
Top||
#7
This will be big in the blue states that went for Gore. No where else.
#8
Making the Presidency subject to the 'popular' vote would be the third and final nail in the coffin of the Republic ("A republic, if you can keep it" Ben Franklin, IIRC.) Transferring the election of Senators to popular vote was the second major step to the destruction of the Republic as it was created (the military abolition of States Rights in 1861-65 was the first, even if for all the right reasons.)
#9
Assemblyman Tom Umberg, a Santa Ana Democrat who chairs the Assembly Election and Redistricting Committee, said the basic premise is understandable even to children.
"When you're in first grade, if the person who got the second-most votes became class leader, the kids would recognize that this is not a fair system," he said.
That is why our electoral system was designed and run by and for ADULTS.
Sheesh.
Recently I came across a World Workers Party (or other lefty money pit) front organization, dedicated to the concept that the Senate represents more 'blue voters' than 'red voters' and thus should be reconfigured to align to the tyranny of the majority. I should have bookmarked the site.
#10
Mark Leno is a scum (and other objects) sucking communist
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/22/2006 19:44 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Several problems with this:
First, if California's voters vote for candidate "A", but candidate "B" gets the national popular vote, then the electors from California are going to ignore their state voters and vote for "B"? Nice in theory, but it would probably happen just once and then the system would be junked (I would also not want to be trusting the California legislature on any of this).
Second, I believe the electors are chosen by the people, not by the state, and the consitution does not require the electors to vote for anybody. The proposed system seems to mean that voters would no longer be selecting electors, the electors would be selected by someone else and then they would be required to vote for a particular candidate. I'm not sure either proposal is constitutional.
The proposed system would strip most states of power. Small population states are over represented in the electral college. Only the roughly 10 most populous states stand to gain. This is why there is no movement to change the constituion properly, via an amendment. The majority of states would not agree to this change.
People tend to ignore that the constitution is, fundamentally, a contract between states. The Constitution itself has never been ratified by popular vote. It was adopted by the states.
#12
So, can states get together and form a "compact" to change any other part of the Constitution without actually going through the specified process?
DoDo: The electors are chosen in a method decided by the state legislature. So, a single state could indeed decide to do this. But, two states cannot form a binding agreement to do so.
Going back to 2000, if this monstrosity had been in effect, we would have had fifty Florida's. Nobody bothered with recounts in Michigan or Pennsylvania because it wouldn't have changed enough votes to flip the state. But in this case, get 50,000 votes here, another 70,000 there, perhaps 10,000 over there, and you got it made. Massive Democrat fraud all over the country.
#13
Nope, cannot change the Constitution legally except by constitutional amendment. They can go ahead and try, and it will fail US Supreme Court review -- probably won't make it past the first state-level court challenge. I doubt that even the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal {Fed} is stupid enough to approve this.
#14
Jackal: I see your point, but I strongly doubt the legislature could constitutionally provide for a system that awards seats in the electoral college based on something other than the state's popular vote. If that were the case a multi-state compact would not be needed, it would only need a handshake between state legislatures.
Also, it would be more than 50 Floridas because popular vote is driven at the precinct level. We would be dependent on the honesty of party machines in Seattle and Philadelphia. Think Cook county in 1960.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) secretly placed political operatives in the city of New Orleans to work against the reelection efforts of incumbent Democrat Mayor Ray Nagin, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. DNC Chairman Howard Dean made the decision himself to back mayoral candidate and sitting Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu (D-LA), sources reveal. Dean came to the decision to back the white challenger, over the African-American incumbent Nagin, despite concerns amongst senior black officials in the Party that the DNC should stay neutral.
The DNC teams actively worked to defeat Nagin under the auspice of the committee's voting rights program. The party's field efforts also coincided with a national effort by Democrat contributors to support Landrieu. Landrieu had outraised Nagin by a wide margin - $3.3 million to $541,980. Preliminary campaign finance reports indicate many of Landrieus contributions came from out of state white Democrat leaders and financiers, including a $1,000 contribution from Sen. Ben Nelson's (D-NE) PAC.
The defeat of Mitch Landrieu is the latest setback for Dean's often criticized field operation. In his victory speech late Saturday night, Nagin praised President Bush. "You and I have probably been the most vilified politicians in the country. But I want to thank you for moving that promise that you made in Jackson Square forward," Nagin said.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/22/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
How Long Do We Have?
About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of
the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of
government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always
votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally
collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship." "The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage ."
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the
2000 Presidential election:
Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million;
Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000
States won by: Gore: 19 Bush: 29
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2
Bush: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned projects and living off government welfare..."
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase. The critical point is when people living on government entitlements passes 50% and can control future elections. From that point, the party that promises the most free entitlements wins. Unfortunately less than 50% of the population will be paying the taxes to support the majority. It wont be lo ng after that the country will be bankrupt.
#2
That's part of the reason for election of senators by state legislatures. The 17th amendment (direct election of senators) should be repealed. The good news is that most of the damage was done between 1910 and 1940. It is slowly being repealed.
BRUNSWICK The drum beat came to an end moments before Nancy Kelly carried the processional cross into St. Paul's Episcopal church. She marched into the funeral ceremony between rows of bikers in leather, tribal drummers in traditional dress, and representatives of the Army, the Air Force and the Boy Scouts in uniform.
The mixed crowd served the memory of her late husband well, mourners said.
Hundreds gathered Saturday to pay their respects to Staff Sgt. Dale Kelly Jr. of the Maine Army National Guard, who died May 6 in a roadside bombing in Iraq.
Kelly, 48, of Richmond, was a combat medic at war and a dedicated volunteer at home, family and friends said. He also had a good sense of humor, even in dark times, they said.
But to his younger brother, the combat medic, volunteer and former Rhode Island Air National Guard member was always "Jimmy."
"Dale Kelly was my father," said David Kelly, of Warwick, R.I., who said the younger Dale went by the nickname "Jimmy."
David Kelly told mourners about an older brother who was slight in stature, struggled at school and didn't get dates.
The tough teenage years gave "Jimmy" the compassion that would later make him a good Boy Scout volunteer, medic and Christian mentor, David Kelly said.
"(Dale Kelly) had strength of character forged by trial by fire," he said.
Kelly died after a roadside bomb exploded near his convoy in Ad Diwaniyah, in southern Iraq. A University of Maine student, Staff Sgt. David Veverka, 25, of Jamestown, Pa., also was killed in the attack.
Kelly, a former Brunswick resident who remained active at St. Paul's after his family moved to Richmond, was a Bath Iron Works employee for 17 years.
In 2004, he was credited with obtaining welding units later sent to Iraq so the 133rd Engineer Battalion could reinforce the armor on its Humvees. Kelly helped get the plasma torches to Iraq at a time when National Guard vehicles did not have sufficient wartime armor.
"I can assure you, that action saved lives," said Maj. Gen. John W. Libby, adjutant general of the Maine Army National Guard.
Libby, who spoke at the funeral, also praised Nancy Kelly, who days ago sat with Veverka's family at the former UMaine student's funeral.
"What you don't know, Nancy, is how the manner you've conducted yourself . . . has been an inspiration," he said.
Saturday afternoon's ceremony drew an overflow crowd that briefly shut down sections of Pleasant Street and trickled into a banquet hall next to the sanctuary and the church's garden, where funeral-goers who could not find seats listened to the service broadcast on a pair of loudspeakers. Maine's congressional delegation, Gov. John Baldacci and more than a dozen guardsmen attended the ceremony.
A small, intertribal group of traditional medicine drummers sung praises outside the church before the funeral.
Kelly's family has American Indian ancestry, and his wife asked the Red Hawk Medicine Drum group to perform before the church service. A member of the group said they performed their "Warriors Healing Song" as a tribute to servicemembers and their families.
"They're also warriors, those who have to go through the pain and suffering" of a deployment, said Tammy Singingstone of Fairfield, speaking of military families.
Kelly's service was on a list of funerals Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church was scheduled to picket, according to a statement issued Friday. No one from the church, whose leaders believe the United States is doomed because it is too tolerant of homosexuality, was visible at the funeral Saturday.
Westboro members protest at soldiers' funerals because they believe U.S. deaths in Iraq show God's wrath, but so far they have been no-shows at other Maine services.
More than 100 members of the Patriot Guard Riders attended Kelly's funeral, accompanying the procession with a force of around 75 motorcycles and at least 10 cars.
The group has served as a barrier between Westboro protesters and mourners in the past. At Kelly's funeral, they lined the Pleasant Street sidewalk leading up to St. Paul's, draping American flags.
Tina Ruel and husband Chris Dodd of Gorham were in position across the street from the church more than an hour before the funeral, holding a flag.
The Patriot Guard members said they wanted to help continue the support for fallen soldiers that was ignited in late March, when Westboro members said they would picket the funeral of Sgt. Corey Dan of Norway. No Westboro protesters showed up, but throngs of patriotic supporters came in support of the Dan family.
Former policeman with area ties died in Afghan attack
BROOKVILLE, Ind. -- Before the body of former town Police Sgt. Ron Zimmerman returns to his hometown of Connersville this week, it will pass through Brookville, where he served for six years.
Zimmerman, 37, of Glenwood, was killed Wednesday in Afghanistan by a suicide car bomber while traveling in a convoy on his way to train Afghan police officers.
The Connersville High School graduate was employed by a private contractor, DynCorp International of Irving, Texas.
Officer Terry Mitchum, Zimmerman's former partner on the Brookville force, said the body of his best friend will arrive by Wednesday at Greater Cincinnati Airport. When it does, Mitchum will be there.
"I'm planning on escorting him back through Brookville so the people here can come out and then on to Connersville, where a big ceremony is being planned with an honor guard," Mitchum said.
Zimmerman left the Brookville force in late 2004 and his abilities as a police officer took him around the world, first to Kosovo and then Afghanistan. He loved to show people the small Indiana community where he last served, friend Kathy Baudendistel said.
Zimmerman would pull up Baudendistel's Web site, Wolf Creek Habitat and Rescue, so his new friends could see the green hills and wolf pups he loved, Baudendistel said.
Baudendistel's voice cracked with grief Friday as she talked about Zimmerman from her workplace, George's Video in Brookville. The video store and pharmacy are next door to the Brookville Police Station, so Baudendistel saw Zimmerman often.
"It's real hard. He was a wonderful guy and I've had a hard time believing he's gone. He was doing what he loved," Baudendistel said.
Sometimes Baudendistel brought baby wolves to work so Zimmerman could see and pet them.
"That's one of my last memories of him, petting those babies. He loved animals. When he came home, he'd always give me a hug. It hurts when you see on TV what happened to him," Baudendistel said.
After spending a year in Kosovo, Zimmerman went to work for DynCorp in March and had been in Afghanistan little more than a month, company spokesman Greg Lagana said.
Last July, Zimmerman came home from Kosovo for Mitchum's wedding, to be his best man.
"I wasn't going to get married until he came back," Mitchum said. "I told him we'd get married when he could get here, but he arranged it."
Zimmerman became a law enforcement officer for the right reason -- to help people, Mitchum said.
"He always put others' feelings first. When things got heated, he'd never back away. He was the first one through the door. He wouldn't let another officer get in danger," Mitchum said.
As a policeman, Zimmerman often phoned in meal orders to the Pioneer Restaurant and Lounge, just across the parking lot from the Franklin County Courthouse. Sharon Byrley, a Pioneer waitress for 10 years, remembers Zimmerman as a good customer and pleasant person.
And when the man with the "million dollar grin" couldn't find a restaurant open on third shift in this small town, he often ate at Officer Tim Wilkerson's house.
"Ron and I were shift partners for about a year before he left," Wilkerson said.
"Zimmerman had a metabolism that could burn up food and he was always hungry. He'd say, 'Do you think Kathy's (Wilkerson's wife) still up? Will she make us something to eat?' He'd eat anything. You'd think he was eating for a couple of people."
Police Officer Brian Bischoff was on duty early Thursday morning when he got the call from a regional commander in Afghanistan that Zimmerman was dead. The commander wanted someone from his old police force to break the news to Zimmerman's widow, Marla.
"I called Terry (Mitchum) because I knew they were good friends and he went. It was a shock," Bischoff said. "Ron always had a smile on his face and was ready to work. He was go, go, go. He couldn't sit still."
His energy was part of his decision to move on to private contractor work, Bischoff said.
"(Ron) said it was something he had to do. There wasn't much more he could do in Brookville. He was ready to do something else and the money was a lot better too," Bischoff said.
Karen Short of Brookville remembers Zimmerman as the officer who could have given her a ticket, but didn't.
"Some cops are jerks and then there was Ron," Short said. "He had a better way of dealing with people. He was a really good guy."
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.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) secretly placed political operatives in the city of New Orleans to work against the reelection efforts of incumbent Democrat Mayor Ray Nagin, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. DNC Chairman Howard Dean made the decision himself to back mayoral candidate and sitting Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu (D-LA), sources reveal. Dean came to the decision to back the white challenger, over the African-American incumbent Nagin, despite concerns amongst senior black officials in the Party that the DNC should stay neutral. 
