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On the lighter side. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=622_1236062375

The Dark Night of the Civilization by John Zmirak    3/05/09   I've lived through a lot of Lents, but none has felt quite like this one. Most years, we try as well or badly as we can to follow Christ a few steps into the desert -- dipping our toes in the sand of some manageable sacrifice, penance, or works of charity. We give up some of the things that God made, and which are good, for the sake of something better -- closeness to Him.   And it works for us, or it doesn't. Either way, at...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Patty Milich, a state employee, spent five months trying to give $80 to painter Rick Stitch. An unassuming arts administrator, Ms. Milich leads a double life as California's official art sleuth. The job tracking down abstract expressionists is an unintended consequence of a little-known 1977 law designed to cut artists in on the profits from the resale of their works. When a work of art is resold in the state, or by a California resident, the seller must set aside 5% of the gross selling price to pay the artist. The law applies to any resale of...

On US radio's Garrison show today, I was asked for my reaction as a true born Englishman to President Obama's double insult - first the sending back of the Winston Churchill bust, then his snub to Gordon Brown. "Tough one. Really tough one," I said, torn - as most of surely are - between delight at seeing Brown roundly humiliated, and dismay at having the special relationship so peremptorily, cruelly and bafflingly ruptured. Iain Martin is quite right here: no matter how utterly rubbish we have become as a nation in the Blair/Brown years, Britain's friendship is something Obama will...

Baghdad - Before US troops rolled into Iraq, Robert Eagle, an Iraqi, had seen his fair share of tattoos. There were lots of traditional Bedouin designs – simple patterns of lines and dots – and prisoners who scrawled loved ones' names using ink and a sewing needle, but nothing more complicated than this. "These were terrible tattoos," says Mr. Eagle, who goes by the English translation of his name. It wasn't until US forces arrived and Eagle began working alongside American and British security contractors inked with dragons, Chinese characters, and a host of other designs that he realized there...

The lesson in this week's episode is that all Republicans should not get into inessential and otiose arguments regarding and/or with Rush Limbaugh... EXACTLY as the scheming and underhanded Obama and Emanuel have meticulously planned- DO NOT go for the bait. This propaganda offensive is meant to divert attention from Obama's ongoing demolition of the country, and drive a wedge between his opponents- betraying insecurity and lack of scruples on his part. This President disengenuously portrays the Republican Party as monolithic and single-minded on one hand, while attempting to exploit the differences that he full-well knows exist on the other....

I saw this on Fox News just this morning but couldn't find anything on it at their website (yet?). Fox reported that the man actually survived and is okay! A brief description from the person who posted the YouTube video: "Raw footage from a Turkish news station shows a man leveled by a truck as it is smashed from the side by a train that no one saw coming. The station claims that he miraculously survived the accident." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftl9JyJackI

A British woman deliberately bit off her boyfriend's tongue during a kiss after complaining she wanted a baby and wasn't getting pregnant, the BBC reported. Tracey Davis, 40, and her boyfriend were celebrating his 45th birthday when she got upset and he tried to comfort her. While Mark Coghill was moving closer to her, she asked him to kiss her.

Unable to get to Malkin, National Review Corner, Ace of Spades. FreeRepublic and American Thinker (both hosted in Cali, I think) are fine. Anyone else having a problem this morning or know something about an Interweb outage somwwhere?

Minnesotaâ's own Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance is back on the job at the Capitol. This year, we are seeing a number of very dangerous bills proposed. Second Amendment rights, American liberties, are very much at risk. Metrocrats ( Urban Liberal anti gun democrats) control both the MN House and the MN Senate. They have done their best to stack committees to pass legislation that will harass law-abiding gun owners, sometimes turning them into criminals. So far we have two items to report to you. One needs your action this week. This Week Paymar's Gun Owners Criminalization Legislation This Friday...

http://www.working-minds.com/galtmini.htm John Galt's Speech For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John Galt?" This is John Galt speaking. I'm the man who's taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You've heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man's sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you've demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You've sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you? Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging...

This evening, Leo Donofrio, Plaintiff in Donofrio v. Wells, reports that he has released the first part of his legal briefing stating his opinion of challenging the President’s authority via a prerogative writ known as quo warranto. At this time, Mr. Donofrio will be working solo on this issue. For the “illegitimizers” (my term for those who don’t believe there’s a need to enforce the Constitution’s eligibility requirements) out there, Mr. Donofrio points out a very interesting aspect of law: Many have argued that only Congress can remove a sitting President and that the separation of powers enumerated in the...

On US radio's Garrison show today, I was asked for my reaction as a true born Englishman to President Obama's double insult - first the sending back of the Winston Churchill bust, then his snub to Gordon Brown. "Tough one. Really tough one," I said, torn - as most of surely are - between delight at seeing Brown roundly humiliated, and dismay at having the special relationship so peremptorily, cruelly and bafflingly ruptured. Iain Martin is quite right here: no matter how utterly rubbish we have become as a nation in the Blair/Brown years, Britain's friendship is something Obama will...

In a recent Wall Street Journal Opinion Editorial titled, “Deficits and Fiscal Credibility,“, Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) presented his reasons for advocating a “No” vote on the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009. Senator Bayh asserted, “Our nation’s current fiscal imbalance is unprecedented, unsustainable and, if unaddressed, a major threat to our currency and our economic vitality. The national debt now exceeds $10 trillion. This is almost double what it was just eight years ago, and the debt is growing at a rate of about $1 million a minute.” He went on to state, “The bloated omnibus requires sacrifice from no...

Yogi Berra once famously remarked “you can observe a lot just by watching.” To which we might add: and by reading, too . . . Jennifer Rubin has a fascinating item over at Contentions today. Perusing a Time story on Susan Rice, Pres. Obama’s pick as UN Ambassador, Rubin noted this revelation: "Rice is married to Canadian journalist Ian Cameron, executive producer of ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Observes Rubin: “Wait. The EP of a top Sunday show is married to a top Obama official? Shouldn’t this be disclosed on air, at least when they are discussing foreign policy?”

I have had a credit card account with the same bank since 1994, have never had a balance, always pay the account before it is due. I use it for just about every purchase I make. However, this week I get a letter from the bank stating that the Interest Rate is going up 7% and the letter clearly states that if I do not accept the new terms I can close tha account.

China is quickly moving into alternative energy in monstrous proportions. There will be an open-bid competition in March to choose a project lead for the construction of a 10 MWp (megawatt-peak) solar power plant in northwestern China. The plant is estimated to generate 16.37 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. This follows a previous investment in a 400 megawatt-peak wind farm, which costs $659 million to construct. The Chinese government expects the plant to cover a surface area of roughly 247 acres (0.38 square miles) in the desert of northwestern China, according to Digitimes. The cost of the on-grid solar...

President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the Bush administration had tried to undermine organized labor and he assured U.S. labor leaders they would always have a "place at the table" under his presidency. "We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests," Obama said in prepared remarks for a video address to the executive board of the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor federation, meeting in Miami. Obama, who won strong backing from trade unions in his Democratic presidential campaign, said there could not be a strong middle class, the focus of his economic...

My dear grandson is receiving the holy sacrament of Baptism this Sunday. I ask for your prayers for his blessing, but I ask you to also pray for his father, my son, to fully receive God's grace. Although I raised him in the faith, my son has been away from the faith since his late teens. The act of choosing to have his first child baptized, I pray, is my son's first step in coming back to the fold rather than just a social event.

A quick-thinking taxi driver and two police officers stopped a bulldozer terrorist from carrying out what he hoped would be a murderous rampage on Jerusalem's Menachem Begin Highway Thursday afternoon. A photo essay follows: