Posted on 05/23/2006 4:30:43 PM PDT by GretchenM
President Bush met and held a press conference (text) with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the White House.
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will meet with the president on Thursday; one topic they will discuss is Blair's recent trip to Iraq. PM Blair will depart on Friday.
Welcome to Sanity Island!
Beautiful photo.
If you take another vacation in the area, I have a 7th-cousin who runs a B&B in Middlesex County, VA on the Rappahannock River, that was built ~1680 by my 8th-great-grandfather. We stayed there a couple of years ago, it was neat. I can FReepMail you details if you want.
Those look like our "Yodels."
What memories that brings back.
I was never that fast but quite accurate I only got 45wpm on my typing exam but I do have advance typing certificate.
John Tilley! Yippee!
Jeepers, and John Howland, too!
Thank you so much. I skipped over "The Bravest President" when it was posted separately on FR...I just can't handle the hate right now.
Thank you. I don't expect to go back in my lifetime. I found the 5 hours stuck in an airplane fairly uncomfortable, and don't know if I will be able to walk so much in a year or 2. Getting old, you know...
I think that's why this was so special. I just know it was my one and only chance to see the East.
Night sleep tight see you tomorrow
Hi "cuz"
well, Genealogy is a metamathematical animal. For ex., going from us back to our Mayflower ancestors - any guess as to how many ancestors we have in the one line? (I'm not including ancestral cousins, aunts, uncles etc - only 7th or 8th great great grandparents?
Keep in mind that each one of has the same number of ancestors, starting with 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents - etc doubling each generation back.
So do you have a guess yet? your first sets of great great grandparents will be the 5th generation back from you - so your 7th or 8th g g grandparents will be 11/12 generations back. In your 12th generation back, there will be: 4096 8th great great grandparents. (Some couples will probably be listed twice and have different lines down to you through different children.)
However, the numbers change dramatically when it switches over to "descendants" as the rule of doubling no longer applies. Now the numbers depend on how many children each couple had...for example: John and Priscilla Alden are one of my sets of 7th great great grandparents. THEY had 11 children - and today, there are tens of thousands of descendants.
Back to the numbers that ARE absolute: AS I mentioned, when you get back many generations, you will find many couples appearing more than once...our genealogical 'tree' is shaped like a diamond. It starts at the bottom point with us and widens as it rises...after so many generations, as the same couples start showing up again and again, the separate names start to get fewer and the shape starts coming in again until it reaches the top point - your FIRST ONE ancestor.
Mathematician's and genealogists maintain that by the time we reach the 33rd generation - which puts us back before medieval days - everyone on the face of the earth is related.
We are, truly, brothers and sisters. Ain't is a shame we can't get along better!
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/3881775.html
Why is it whenever our leaders in Congress unilaterally decide Bush "owes it to Congress" to turn over sensitive materials that affect matters of national security, they whine and moan about "checks and balances" but now when the executive branch wants information from a congressman implicating him in a crime, it's suddenly immunized from scrutiny? I guess a congressman can break any laws he feels like breaking. As long as he's clever enough to hide all of the evidence in his office on Capitol Hill, the prosecutor will never be able to get his hands on the smoking gun. Does anyone else see a double standard here?
They really downplay the warrant part. When the judicial branch of government issues the warrant, that is check on the executive's power. They say that isn't enough. I've got news. The judicial branch has the final word on interpreting the Constitution. Until the courts tell the FBI it can't constitutionally get a warrant, Congress has nothing to say about the constitutionality of the procedure. But when it is the court issuing the warrant, it is more convenient to ignore details like that.
And as far as Bush's wiretapping etc. programs, Congress has no right to run around willy-nilly demanding oversight. Article II gives the president, and him only, the power to faithfully execute the laws. Surveillance is a core law enforcement function, not a legislative power. Granted, intelligence might not always be specifically about law enforcement, but it is a heck of a lot more akin to that than law-making. The legislature and the president are co-equal branches of government. The executive is not subservient to the legislature, and Bush does not have to genuflect to Congress and say "mother, may I" as a condition of doing his job. We have a presidency because the founders did not want to give those wrote the laws the power to enforce them.
And the legislature has adequate checks on his power. To name just one, Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. If congressmen don't like Bush's programs, they can use their exclusive power over the budget to defund the ones they don't like. They can even make oversight a condition of continued funding. They've got Bush right by the presidential nuts if they want him. If they don't want to squeeze, that's their affair. We don't need to invent new checks on the executive branch just because Congress has up and decided that the ones in Articles I (discussing Congress) and III (discussing the judiciary) of the Constitution are inadequate.
I'm tired of Congress and the media acting like our president is some sort of Nazi-dictator wannabe threatening the constitutional system of checks and balances everytime they decide not to exercise the powers they've got. They may have valid political/social/economic etc. reasons for their decisions not to do so, but the power is still in their hands, not the president's.
I am glad we have a president who does not simply stand and tolerate Congress' attempts to aggrandize its power. Give 'em hell, Georgie!
Sorry by the time I got to your request I had already done the toaster do you want it redone?
As I said on one of the threads today the President may not consider them the 'base' of his party.
OOOHHH!
I can be an elitist about living on the east coast, so apologies!
That is one beautiful photo I have a feeling it will pop up from time to time, I am sure many people have snagged it.
Nord, LOL, my first thought is it's a poisened apple! Hope Tony doesn't eat it.
They aren't the base..........WE are. And we still support him.
The are chocolate sponge with white butter cream (imitation) rolled and covered in chocolate a small swiss roll.
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