Free Republic

"The only possible reason he would be asked to testify is because he is a high-profile Catholic bishop"

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton was asked to testify because HE was abused by a Catholic priest as a child. Gumbleton IS a Catholic Church sex-abuse victim.

(Gumbleton's brother is gay, I think also abused by same priest - but can't remember for sure, but his brother is gay and so Gumbleton had spoken up early about gay rights, another thorn in the church's side when it comes to Gumbleton).

Many folk used to send their boys up north to pick cherries in the summer. Was especially good place to send a misbehaving boy, not only would mom and dad (and the community) get a break from the trouble-making, but the cherry farmers had a way of getting the boys to work and build a work ethic. Many seniors tell how their boys came back from a summer of cherry picking never to cause trouble again, study hard (they had learned what type of labor they would be doing the rest of their lives if they didn't study) and become responsible citizens.

TOny Douglas was the boy who lived in the apartment complex and was Shawns best friend who has been interviewed and said he was over Shawns apartment every day.

Thanks, and more questions as I read more.

I read that Devlin was adopted, as were three of his BROTHERS. Strange Devlin's parents adopted so many boys and no girls.

We know that abusers go on to abuse.

Was Devlin sexually abused as a child? If so, did Devlin see his own adoption as no more than a child abducted/adopted for sex? If he was raised to think it was ok to "adopt" a child for sexual reasons, it would explain his behavior.

I wonder how old Devlin was when he was adopted?

The news just never keeps up with my questions. If I owned a newspaper, I wouldn't sleep til I had the answers.

We live near a foster home, the foster mom said over the years she's seen that abused kids are brazen about abusing others and feel no shame about abuse as to them it is "normal", which is why they quickly start abusing other children around them when placed in foster care - so I worry if Shawn was abused did he make advances towards Tony or his brothers?

Questions of the day:

1-Did Tony see Ben?
2-How did they plan on explaining Ben to Tony?
3-Obviously Tony would recognize Ben with so much media coverage of the kidnapping, and the white truck description.
4-It would be hard for Devlin to kill Shawn - how to explain disappearance to Tony's family and other kids Shawn hung out with.
5-Why did Devlin teach Shawn to drive a month ago? To drive the getaway vehicle after the kidnapping? Tony was in the truck when Shawn drove, too, according to news reports, was he in on it?
6-Was Shawn in the truck during Ben's kidnapping?
7-Did Shawn kidnap Ben?
8-Did Devlin ever post pictures of Shawn? Should we be looking for missing boys on porn sites? What about the face scanning technology we heard about used on crowds to find terrorists, can't that be used for this purpose?

The article lists the states targeted as:
Georgia, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon and California.

I looked up polls at http://www.surveyusa.com/currentelectionpolls.html

ALL of these states have Kerry winning or are swing states, with the exception of Georgia.

Would there be a political reason for terrorists to choose these states?

We also have to remember that we know how far candidates will go to win elections - could this have been planted in an effort to scare people in those states back to supporting Bush?

Having seen the media used so many times for such things, it is something that needs consideration. Hate to say it, but i hope I am right in this thinking, because the alternative - that terrorists are targeting our schools - is much worse.

LINK: http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/3026297/detail.html

IT WAS PASSED BY UNANIMOUS VOTE!

Hamtramck Residents To Hear Prayer Broadcasts

Issue Sparks Heated Debate Among Residents

POSTED: 9:13 am EDT April 21, 2004

UPDATED: 9:43 am EDT April 21, 2004

Hamtramck residents will soon be hearing a Muslim call to prayer five times a day following a unanimous vote by the City Council Tuesday night.

The issue of sending out the prayer on a loudspeaker in the city sparked a heated debate among residents.

"If you guys think about it, the Muslim call to prayer is actually a beautiful thing," an unidentified man who supported the issue said during the City Council meeting.

Some residents are opposed to the call to prayer, saying it gives state sponsorship of a religion and it lifts Islam above all other religions in Hamtramck, Local 4 reported.

"I would say that is a distortion," Hamtramck City Councilwoman Karen Majewski said. "We worked very hard to craft this ordinance in such a way that it would cover all means of religious expression."

Resident Maria Radtke called it "one big mess."

"There'll be no peace as far as I'm concerned," Radtke said.

Resident Bob Golen also opposes the call to prayer. He said he is a Christian and does not believe in the tenants of the Muslim faith.

Majewski said the ordinance will allow the city "a way to deal with all religions, not simply the Muslim call to prayer."

The councilwoman also said the amendment to the noise ordinance passed by the City Council "gives us the flexibility to adjust the number of speakers, the direction of the speakers, the level of loudness. So that will all depend on the community response, on the particular neighborhood that the mosque may be in, because we have several mosques, and the particularities of each case."

City Council members may have voted to allow the daily prayer, but they have not yet set a decibel level for the mosques. The council will make the decision at a meeting next week.

The calls are expected to begin in May with broadcasts between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

As for complaints of the noise pollution created by the call to prayer, Majewski said there are other noise issues because Hamtramck is an urban city.

"We have a lot of noise on our streets," Majewski said.

She said there is flexibility within the ordinance to deal with all of the noise problems such as cars, trains and noisy neighbors.

"This ordinance gives us a way, a mechanism, by which to deal with these complaints," Majewski said.

I remember a similar story only it was an infant's ID - the parents were trying to get a new ID and had no luck.

NOTE: The Birthday of the man who's ID they used is Sept. 11th! Too much to be a coincidence?

There is one other important argument you forgot - my computer reminded me - FREEZE UPS - computers are not picky about where and when they decide to freeze up and refuse to work. This has got to be a potential extreme time waster and a problem that is inherent in computers. Not to mention DEAD BATTERIES!

Here is one college student's post I found online for help with her laptop, it will prove prophetic, I'm sure, as parents bang their head against walls because a test was missed or hours and hours of homework lost on a froze up computer:

Beth to school 8/21/02. Plugged into network.
Connected to email. Said goodbye. Beth was early on
campus to try out for sports.

8/22/02. Beth reports a few problems but she was not
using the computer much because of tryouts. Eat, Tryout,
Sleep. Etc.

8/28/02 Beth registered for classes. Still have
intermittent problems but not using it much.

9/02/02 Beth's Classes start.

9/03/02 Beth calls and says that the laptop keeps
crashing. Specifically she was receiving file not found
at cold boot. Plus IE6 would disappear with no error
message. Plus IE6 would freeze up the whole computer.
She needed to power down and up to continue.

9/06/02. Beth says she can not get her homework done
online because of computer problems. She starts her list.
IT guys at school work on the problem (to no avail). Drive re-imaged 5 times. We look for phone numbers. Call Best Buy and were told to write down the error messages and bring in the system.

______________________________________________
Who loses? taxpayers
Who wins? Computer company, tech support provider - bet you could find their lobbyist in the capital pushing this agenda as we speak. Think of the money to be made by them.

You're right, we can take away conspiracy/terrorism, but what about an experiment/equipment malfunction? Early indications were internal, not external, as you can see from my earlier post. How about just plain bad luck, which seems to be coming in the bucketful on this one.

I found this article that said there were other problems on this flight. Three to be exact, here is an exerpt from this article stating problems in the "cargo bay" (or hold?):

Engelauf said the shuttle and its systems were working well, with only a trio of problems reported. "I would call this an exceptionally clean orbiter so far," he said. One of two heaters in a cryogenic storage tank within the cargo bay wasn't working, and neither was part of an intercom system between the crew cabin and the SpaceHab module. The only trouble of any consequence is with a system that processes data downlinked from the SpaceHab module. Although the communication link with the shuttle's Ku-band system is working well, the experiment data is not being captured on the ground. Engelauf said that until the problem is solved, some experiment data will have to be recorded in the shuttle and played back later. In the meantime, Columbia remains in a stable orbit with plans to land back in Florida on Feb. 1.

mission control knew that some signals, like tire pressure and hold temperature were lost well before the shuttle reached Texas; either the sensors were destroyed or the wires connecting them to the transponder. Either way, these events spelled serious trouble because those things are internal to the craft.

What is in the hold? Could something have caught fire inside and that been the cause of fire and not re-entry heat? It has happened on aircraft.

...or maybe it is the underbelly?

Here is the picture of the Columbia wing being worked on at Boeing in 2000

I found some pictures of Columbia someone took while it was in for service at Boeing in 2000, go to this site and scroll halfway down the page - and you can doubleclick the shuttle pictures for a closer look - one is of tiles being replaced on one of the wings.

ah, I see.

- as for terrorism, conspiracies and tin foil - for example, the name of the town being Palestine, I guess after reading your reply you could also say it was a "left wing" conspiracy...amazing how one can pull what they need from any event and spin it.

I did some quick research and found that there is a big Balloon launching facility in Palestine TX - the web sites below, could it have been terrible coincidence that shuttle happens to hit balloon from this facility? They aren't supposed to fly that high, it was a nice day, could it be a freak occurance?

palestine TX, ballon website: nsbf balloon launching facility

click link for map showing sample July2002 payload right near disaster area.payload position

here is a plot of a recent/current? balloon: link

I did some quick research and found that there is a big Balloon launching facility in Palestine TX - this web site (once translated) shows large balloon being launched with equipment in tow - could it have been terrible coincidence that shuttle happens to hit balloon from this facility?

check out pics on this web site: http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~deboer/pdm/pdminstastsat.html

FYI, I'm not up on weapons laws, what kind of firearms would cause federal charges? Unlicensed? Wonder what he was doing with the radio that was illegal. With free speech it shouldn't be something he said, right?