Tag Archives: National

Rare Benjamin Franklin-Owned Newspaper Unearthed at Auction Reveals Stunningly Simple Text of Historic Moment

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While July 4, 1776, gets all the glory for being the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, just 12 words in a newspaper owned by Benjamin Franklin announced the historic move that came first in the form of a vote on July 2.

“Philadelphia, July 3: Yesterday the Continental Congress declared the United Colonies free and independent states.”

Pennsylvania-Gazette

That’s all it said in the Philadelphia Gazette.

There were so few characters in this message that Deseret News described it as “America’s 238-year-old tweet,” a nod to Twitter’s 140-character limit.

According to Deseret News, only 1,000 copies of the newspaper were printed holding the text that declared independence from Great Britain. It was buried under pages of classified ads looking for runaway slaves. One such copy turned up at an auction catalog last month and was snapped up by collector Brent Ashworth, who last year displayed some of his other rare items at Glenn Beck’s “Man in the Moon” event held over the Independence Day holiday.

“I was shocked,” Ashworth told Deseret of the copy. “It’s a very rare paper. … It’s a great piece.”

Read more at The Blaze

Louisiana sheriff says ACLU won’t stop public prayer event

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A sheriff in Louisiana said he couldn’t care less what the American Civil Liberties Union says about his planned public prayer event — it’s going forward, lawsuit or no lawsuit.

“Not only am I elected to serve the people of Bossier Parish, but I live here and my family lives here,” Sheriff Julian Whittington told The Shreveport Times, of his upcoming food, music and prayer rally for the Fourth of July.

“I think Bossier Parish is a better place with Christianity and Christian values involved in it. I am an elected official. I’m also a citizen here. I think this is what’s best for us. I don’t work for anybody in Washington. What they do, what they say, I couldn’t really care less.”

The event is the locality’s second annual “In God We Trust” rally, and it uses in part public money. But it’s being held on church property — and that has ACLU executive director Marjorie Esman up in arms, Newsmax reported.

“If the event is held on sheriff’s property, then by definition it is a public event that sends a message of government endorsement of Christianity,” Ms. Esman told The Shreveport Times.

Read more at Washington Times

Sheriff’s rally follows best of our traditions

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Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court famously observed, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions.”

Sheriff Whittington - Photo from Bossier Parish Sheriff web site.

Sheriff Whittington – Photo from Bossier Parish Sheriff web site.

In the mind of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, the only thing worse than the conservative, God-fearing citizens of Bossier Parish are the no-nonsense elected officials here who stand boldly for our values. A leader like Bossier Sheriff Julian Whittington is the ACLU’s worst nightmare, because he is completely unaffected by their standard intimidation tactics.

The announcement of the Sheriff’s second annual “In God We Trust Rally” for July 4th is giving the ACLU fits because they find it absolutely intolerable that thousands of patriotic citizens would want to come together again for a free event to celebrate Independence Day and show support for the national motto. Unfortunately for the ACLU, the Sheriff and the people still enjoy these fundamental rights.

Read more at Bossier Press-Tribune

U.S. Sues American Co. For Requiring Workers to Speak English

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basic-english
The United States government is actually suing a private American business for discriminating against Hispanic and Asian employees because they don’t speak English on the job.

It involves a Green Bay Wisconsin metal and plastic manufacturer that fired a group of Hmong and Hispanic workers over their English skills, “even though those skills were not needed to perform their jobs,” according to the feds. More importantly, forcing employees to speak English in the U.S. violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, says the Obama administration.

Here’s the twisted explanation from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency that enforces the nation’s workplace discrimination laws; the Civil Rights Act protects employees from discrimination based on national origin, which includes the linguistic characteristics of a national origin group. Therefore, according to this reasoning, foreigners have the right to speak their native language even during work hours at an American company that requires English.

Requirements of English fluency and so-called English only rules are often implemented to make what is really discrimination appear acceptable, says the government attorney handling this case. “But superficial appearances are not fooling anyone,” he assures. “When speaking English fluently is not, in fact, required for the safe and effective performance of a job, nor for the successful operation of the employer’s business, requiring employees to be fluent in English usually constitutes employment discrimination on the basis of national origin — and thus violates federal law.”

Read more at Judicial Watch

Apparently part of Barrack’s push to make you learn foreign language.

No gun store with a twist of irony

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lumberton_storeMISSISSIPPI – According to articles at Guns.com and Freedom Outpost, Lamont Williams entered Keith’s Superstore in Lumberton, Mississippi stabbing the manager eight times.

Lamont Williams is described as a former, disgruntled employee with whom the unidentified manager had problems with previously.

A concealed carry holder inside the store witnessed the event and chased down Williams holding him with his weapon until police arrived.

In apparent gratitude for the efforts of the courageous private citizen who put his life at risk, the manager of the store recently posted a sign prohibiting guns inside the store.

Knives are welcome at Keith’s Superstore, but you cannot stop a robbery with your gun.

Henrico jury finds aspiring rapper guilty in shooting

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“You are my sacrifice,” Brown said he heard El-Amin say before he fired a bullet that ripped through Brown’s hand, deflecting it enough that it missed his head.

wafeeq-sabir-el-aminBY LIZ SAWYER Richmond Times-Dispatch

A Henrico County jury today found an aspiring rapper guilty of the malicious wounding of his best friend, as well as two other drug and weapons charges stemming from a night of marijuana and meditation last December.

During a two-day trial in Henrico Circuit Court, the jury heard several conflicting version of the Dec. 26 shooting and doping incident, which left childhood friends pointing the finger, and ultimately a gun, at one another.

Wafeeq Sabir El-Amin, 27, suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen, but was charged for firing at his music partner’s head first, according to testimony.

Read more at Richmond Times-Dispatch

Meriam Ibrahim and the Persecution of Christians

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The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has found that Christians are persecuted in more places today than any other religious group, suffering formal or informal harassment in three-quarters of the world’s countries.

BN-DL196_howall_D_20140626143917By Charlotte Allen
A 27-year-old Sudanese woman named Meriam Ibrahim seemed likely to become a 21st-century Christian martyr in May when she was sentenced to death by hanging because of her faith. Then this week Ms. Ibrahim was saved when a court overturned her conviction for apostasy from Islam—her father was a Muslim, and under Islamic law she is automatically a Muslim too. (She had also been sentenced to public flogging for adultery because her husband, Daniel Wani, is also a Christian, and Islamic law doesn’t recognize marriages between Muslim women and non-Muslim men.) But the day after her release on Monday, Ms. Ibrahim was arrested again. While the Associated Press reported Thursday that she had again been released Thursday, her future remained uncertain.

Her story is harrowing. Ms. Ibrahim was eight months pregnant with her second child when she was convicted in a Khartoum court on April 30 under the Islamic Shariah law that has governed Sudan since 1989. On May 27, while in prison awaiting execution, Ms. Ibrahim gave birth to her daughter, Maya. Mr. Wani reported that his wife was shackled to the floor during labor. Their year-and-a-half-old son, Martin, had been jailed along with her.

Ms. Ibrahim was re-arrested on Tuesday by a government security force as she, Mr. Wani and their two young children tried to leave Sudan for the U.S. The Sudanese-born Mr. Wani has been an American citizen since 2005. The new charges against Ms. Ibrahim—which are reported to carry penalties of up to seven years in prison—consist of falsifying the family’s travel documents, which were issued by the embassy of South Sudan, the largely Christian territory that seceded from overwhelmingly Muslim Sudan in 2011 after a decades-long civil war. Mr. Wani hails from what is now South Sudan.

Ms. Ibrahim’s story bears uncanny parallels to another Christian story involving young African mothers who did become Christian martyrs, during the early third century: the story of Felicitas and Perpetua, executed for their faith in the Roman port city of Carthage in today’s Tunisia. …

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

Massachusetts police claim exemption from accountablity because they are a private organization.

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15c6042cda9b852935c1d4959afe5ba5MASSACHUSETTS – Police militarization has reached an all-time low in Massachusetts. Not only are they armored and armed as well as any military unit in Afghanistan, they apparently now are not held accountable for their actions. The ACLU of Massachusetts claims a weakness in the Massachusetts public record laws.

ACLU-Tweet-Mass

Recent tweet by ALCUM

According to articles from the Boston Globe and Washington Post, various police forces are combining into groups called law enforcement councils, or LECs.

According to Boston.Com, the ACLU requested certain records concerning the police organizations:

As part of an effort to document regional policing operations, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Massachusetts (“ACLUM”) requested documents concerning NEMLEC’s SWAT Team and RRT in July 2012. The request sought NEMLEC’s training materials, incident reports, deployment statistics, guidelines, procurement records, budgets, agreements with other agencies and documents relating to the structure of the SWAT team and RRT.

The North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC, refused on the grounds that they are a private, non-profit 501(c)3 group that is not required to produce records for the public.

The Washington Post article stated:

Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.

In the 2005 ruling of Gonzales v. Castle Rock, the Supreme Court ruled that police are not Constitutionally obligated to protect you even to enforce a restraining order.

A follow-up tweet by the ACLUM concerning the militarization of Mass. police.

A follow-up tweet by the ACLUM concerning the militarization of Mass. police.


SEE ALSO: Our Homes are Not Battlefields

SEALs want more ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ patches, 8 months after controversy

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image WASHINGTON — €” A military command that supplies U.S. Navy SEALs with new gear says it wants more shoulder patches emblazoned with “Don’t Tread on Me,” less than a year after a firestorm erupted after it was reported that the longstanding tradition could be ended.

U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command’s contracting office in Virginia Beach, Virginia, quietly announced its intent to buy more patches in a notice to industry published June 3. Companies interested in supplying them must be able to show they can obtain the materials used in numerous kinds of Navy uniforms, including those with desert and woodland patterns. The U.S. flag will have seven stripes that can be seen using infrared equipment, the command said.

The notice’s publication follows a controversy last year in which it was reported that Navy SEALs were no longer allowed to wear the “Don’t Tread on Me” logo, also known as the first First Navy Jack. Flown on U.S. vessels, the flag depicts a rattlesnake over red and white stripes.

Navy personnel closely associate the logo with the global war on terrorism because then-Navy Secretary Gordon England authorized it on May 31, 2002, as the official jack, or maritime flag, for the Navy for the duration of the global war on terrorism. The entire Navy began flying the Navy Jack on Sept. 11, 2002, the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It has been widely worn on the left shoulder by sailors deployed in war zones since then, including SEALs.

Read more at Stars and Stripes

Senators McCain and Flake Bring Attention to I-11 Benefits

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mccain-flake1PHOENIX – As the Interstate 11 and Intermountain West Corridor Study advances, it continues to gain attention from lawmakers in the nation’s capital. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and Department of Transportation Director John S. Halikowski today expressed appreciation for the efforts of U.S. Senator John McCain and U.S. Senator Jeff Flake to propose an amendment expressing the “sense of the Congress” in support of the proposed Interstate 11.

The proposed amendment to the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2015 expresses support for I-11 based on “significant enhancement for the western United States” for commerce, tourism, international trade, economic vitality and competitiveness on the global stage. In addition, the proposed amendment supports extending I-11 south to the international border with Mexico and north to the Canadian border.

The proposal lends support to an initiative led by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to study and construct I-11 as a critical economic link for Arizona and the Intermountain West region. Governor Brewer has been a strong advocate for the benefits of I-11, and has worked to focus attention on the proposed corridor.

“Not only will Interstate 11 create jobs in Arizona and Nevada, it also will integrate and increase the global competitiveness of the entire Southwest region,” said Governor Brewer. “I am very pleased to see strong bipartisan support at the local, state and federal level of this significant economic initiative.”

Halikowski expressed appreciation for the attention given to I-11 by lawmakers in Washington, D.C.

“As a corridor creating a stronger connection between Arizona and international markets, in addition to forging a more reliable, safer route between Phoenix and Las Vegas, Interstate 11 has benefits for the entire region,” he said. “ADOT appreciates the support of Senators McCain and Flake in highlighting the critical need for I-11 as a driver for continued economic expansion in the Intermountain West region. It is through leadership like this that we can continue looking forward, assessing our current and future needs and how to raise the funding to support those needs.”

In addition to Senators McCain and Flake, the amendment is supported by Senators Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.).

The Arizona and Nevada departments of transportation have been working together since 2012 on the Interstate 11 and Intermountain West Corridor Study, which includes detailed corridor planning of an interstate link connecting the Phoenix and Las Vegas metropolitan areas, while extending the corridor through southern Arizona to Mexico and potentially north to Canada. Congress designated the future I-11 corridor between Phoenix and Las Vegas as part of the current surface transportation bill, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21).

The Interstate 11 and Intermountain West Corridor Study is a two‐year, multiphase, high‐level study examining the feasibility, benefits, opportunities and constraints of a proposed new interstate highway corridor. The study is expected to be completed this summer. Funding to construct this new corridor has not been identified.

Public meetings for the study are scheduled for June 25 from 6-8 p.m. in the Phoenix area and on June 26 from 4-7 p.m. in Las Vegas. A public meeting in Tucson was held on Wednesday. Through July 18, the public can also participate in a virtual meeting, reviewing the latest project information and providing feedback online. This month-long virtual meeting will be hosted on the project website, i11study.com.