Three small-town eighth-graders in Minnesota were suspended by their principal for not standing Thursday morning for the Pledge o Allegiance, violating a district policy that the principal now say may soon be rewarded to protect free speech rights.

The head of the Minnesota American Civil Liberties Union said that the school’s actions against the students are unconstitutional and his office has informed the district of that today in a strongly worded letter. “The school can’t do that; that’s illegal, “said Chuck Samuelson, the civil liberties group executive director. “Wow.”

Samuelson said that numerous U.S. Court rulings dating back to the 1940s say in “well-settled constitutional law” that students who refuse to participate in the pledge cannot be punished for refusing to participate.” STORY>>>

Anna Jarvis was never married and never had a child. But, like all of us, she had a mother. As a child, Anna sat through a Sunday School series where her mother taught on the subject, “Mothers of the Bible.” At The close of the series she heard her mother pray: “I hope someone, sometime will found a memorial day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it.”

After her mother died in 1905, Anna Channeled her grief in a constructive manner to fulfill her mothers prayer. She launched a nationwide effort to establish an annual day for honoring mothers. In 1908, Mothers Day became a fixture in most states.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are 83 million mothers in the United States. The number of single-mother households has tripled to more than 10 million since 1970. ARTICLE>>>

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on” than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has told USA TODAY.

She cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Hillary. “These are the people you have to win if you’re a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that.”

The Democratic Party can’t win with just “eggheads and African-Americans,” Paul Begala added helpfully.

What Hillary and Begala are saying is politically incorrect, but it is also patently true. Hillary was describing what may now fairly be called the Hillary Democrats — a.k.a. the ex-Reagan Democrats who did not vote for Obama and may defect to John McCain. Read more »

BERLIN, GERMANY — A Soviet soldier heroically waves the red flag, the hammer and sickle billow above the Reichstag. Yevgeny Khaldei photographed one of the iconic images of the 20th century. But the legendary image was manipulated to conceal the fact that the Soviet soldiers were looting. An exhibition of Khaldei’s work opens in Berlin this week.

It was early on the morning of May 2, 1945 and Yevgeny Khaldei had gone to the Reichstag, the German parliament building in the center of Berlin. Three hours earlier the last German commander left in the capital had capitulated, but there was still sporadic fighting going on. Khaldei had his Leica camera with him–and a Soviet flag. MORE>>>>>

DENVER (cbs4) — A man ran through a third-floor window of the Denver City & County Building Wednesday morning as he was set to appear before a judge on assault charges. he was handcuffed at the time and fell to the ground below.

Witnesses said Josephus Haynes, 43, landed on his head. STORY>>>

By 2035, there will be about 1.96 million active Muslims in Britain, compared with 1.63 million church-going Christians, according to calculations by Christian Research, a think-tank. The think-tank has warned that 4,000 churches could close by 2020 if congregations continue to shrink at current rates. MORE>>>

Five years after the “Mission Accomplished” banner was displayed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. The Bush administration now claims that they never meant this to mean the war mission was accomplished, but that the USS Abraham Lincoln had accomplished its mission.
It seems a bit Orwellian to me, that we are now being told that 2+2 does not equal 4. However, this is nothing new for this or other regimes. We are currently living in more of a totalitarian reign than most can see. In this era, hundreds of children can be taken from their parents and put into Government foster homes based on a phone call from a criminal Read more »

ATHENS, Greece - A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world’s gay women. Three islanders from Lesbos — home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women — have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name. One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, “insults the identity” of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians. “My sister can’t say she is a Lesbian,” said Dimitris Lambrou. “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos,” he said. Lambrou said the word lesbian has only been linked with gay women in the past few decades. “But we have been Lesbians for thousands of years,” said Lambrou, who publishes a small magazine on ancient Greek religion and technology that frequently criticizes the Christian Church. More>>>

A young women was attacked, brutally beaten, raped, sodomized, robbed, left bound and gagged, bleeding to death, naked and unconscious in Central Park, Manhattan by a group of blacks and Latinos out on a night of, what was then casually referred to as “wilding.” The victim was not expected to survive. She did, but was permanently damaged. When the trial began, the victim needed protection, in part because of the media circus, that was obvious, but what was not, was that the “jogger” and the prosecution had been threatened with violence, even death. Whenever the prosecutor (Elizabeth Lederer) crossed the street from her office to the courtroom she had to run a gauntlet of protesters who insisted it was a racist trial, the white establishment against blacks; they threatened her life constantly, yelling threats and obscenities and spitting at her. The year was 1989.

The following site provides many more details. PRESS HERE>>>>

CENTRAL PARK JOGGER: THE HEALING CONTINUES — (April 19, 2008) — (WCCO) Nineteen years ago this week the story of a New York woman broke the hearts of Americans and outraged a nation that was fed up with senseless violent crime. The Central Park jogger’s real name was Trisha Meili. She was savagely raped. Suffering numerous injuries, including severe brain injury, Meili was in a coma for nearly two weeks. “I (still) have some physical deficits like no sense of smell and some double vision,” Meili said. MORE>>>

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Police confiscated maps of the federal courthouse from members of a street gang.

Police said it was a sign that members of MS-13 might consider an ambush to spring fellow gang members from custody.

“MS-13 swept into Nashville like a pack of jackals and they left a group of bloody victims in their wake,” said Jim Cavanaugh, special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, in an interview last year. Read more »

HOUSTON — Houston police asked for help on Monday locating a 22-year-old man accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old pregnant girl, officials told KPRC Local 2.Hector Perez-Garcia has been charged with sexual assault of a juvenile.He is described as 5 feet 6 inches tall, 135 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair. He drives a black Mitsubishi Eclipse and was last seen near the 2200 block of Wirt Road.

Anyone with information on Perez-Garcia’s whereabouts is asked to call Houston police at 713-986-3346 or 713-731-5353. SOURCE>>>

Geneva - Increasingly desperate African families are sending children as young as 12 on the perilous sea journey to Europe alone so they can earn and send money home. It is a trend that is costing countries like Italy millions of euros.

‘It is a dangerous phenomenon,’ said Simone Moscarelli, the legal representative of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Lampedusa, an Italian Mediterranean island and frequent landing site for illegal immigrants. ‘Migration is getting younger.’ Read more »

Frederick County Commissioner Lennie Thompson has proposed that next year’s county school system funding be based on a good-faith effort by the school board to count the number of students with questionable immigration status.

He says the count would not identify a student by name.

Thompson says the idea is to gather information to determine how many students whose legal status in the country isn’t reasonably documented. Read more »

Brewski. Suds. Cold one. Pint. Cerveza. Call it what you will, beer may well be the world’s most traditional beverage. First brewed in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia over 8,000 years ago, it rates a mention in the epic of Gilgamesh, and its earliest chemical traces — from 3500 BC –have been found in the Godin Tepe in the Zagros mountains in present day Iran.

On Wednesday, Germans mark their own contribution to the history of beer, the Reinheitsgebot, or purity law, which strictly regulated the price and ingredients of beer at the start of the 16th century.

Brought forth by Duke Wilhelm IV in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt in 1516, the law stated: “In all cities, markets and in the country, the only ingredients used for the brewing of beer must be Barley, Hops and Water. Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this ordinance, shall be punished by the Court authorities’ confiscating such barrels of beer, without fail.” STORY>>>

New York, April 23 (UPI) — Experts on crime and punishment say the United States has the harshest sentences and the most prisoners of any country in the World. Records kept at King’s College in London reveal that with 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners even though it has less than 5 percent of the population, The New York Times reported Wednesday.(nytimesArticle>>)

China, which has four times as many citizens, is a distant second to the United States with 1.6 million prisoners, the report said. Finish Article>>>

A 5-by-5 foot trolley resembling those used by mechanics to slide under cars was put to a very different use over the weekend. Border Patrol agents spotted it resting between two support beams in the underbelly of the Bridge of the Americas during a routine check Sunday afternoon.

The agents Sunday also found a man, lying on top of one of the beams over the eastbound lanes of the Border Highway, near the cart. They brought him down with the help of the El Paso Fire Department.

Fingerprint checks found he was a sex offender registered in Dade County, Fla. and that he had been deported from the United States. MORE>>>

PENTAGON (AP) — A top military officer says the Army’s “stop-loss” program will remain in place at least until the fall of next year. Lieutenant General James Thurman, the deputy chief of staff for Army operations, says he hopes to see demand for troops drop enough by the fall of 2009 that the controversial program will end.

Thurman says there are currently 12,000 troops who have been forced to stay in the service beyond their retirement or re-enlistment dates. Critics call “stop-loss” a “backdoor draft.” SOURCE>>>

By Patrick Buchanan 

Iran is conducting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq, declared Ambassador Ryan Crocker last week.

How? Gen. David Petraeus explained. The Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah are arming, training and directing the Shia militia fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces in Basra and firing rockets into the Green Zone. Said Petraeus, the Quds Force is responsible for killing hundreds of American soldiers.

If true, these are acts of war from a privileged sanctuary. And Bush would be as justified in attacking these Iranian base camps as was Nixon in ordering U.S. forces to clean out the North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia. Read more »

Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies, and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops.

In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky. Read more »

By: Jack Malebranche 

When I was still in school, we had a politically incorrect slang for white kids who acted black. The word was ‘wigger.’ I’ll let you figure out its etymology. I’m not sure if the term is still popular with the kids today or not.

Wiggers were attracted to aspects of the overwhelmingly black hip-hop and rap subcultures. Like teenagers do, they emulated their heroes obsessively, down to the finest detail available to them. They talked the talk. They smoked the ganja. They drank malt liquor. They wore clothes designed for fat people. They chilled and kept it real and were as ghetto fabulous as you can be—in the clean, virtually crime free, air-conditioned food court of an upscale suburban shopping mall.

I think there are still kids like this. Or at least I still see skinny pimply faced white kids hobbling across the street because they can’t keep their XXL pants up.

Read more »

A group of German politicians cut their visit to the West Bank short due to threats from Jewish settlers. Israel should curb the fanaticism of Jewish settlers, said the delegation. The committee members had said that Israeli security forces were unwilling to intervene when Hebron residents began hurling insults and threats at them and that their visit could not be continued.

“Many of us lost German roots and family members during the holocaust,” said David Wilder, (spokesman for the Jewish community). “When Germans come to Hebron, they should at least meet with members of the community.”

Jerzy Montag (a parliamentarian for the German Green Party) called this a “grotesque twisting of the truth.” he said he was willing to talk with the settlers, but not after being insulted and threatened. SOURCE>>>

Almost two-thirds of people in Britain fear race relations are so poor tensions are likely to spill over into violence, a BBC poll has suggested. Of tho 1,000 people asked, 60% said the UK had too many immigrants and half wanted foreigners encouraged to leave.

Equality and Human Rights Commission head Trevor Phillips said the findings were “alarming.” SOURCE>>>

PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania sportsmen aren’t “bitter” about their guns and balk at what they call Sen. Barack Obama’s double-talk in courting their support. In a state that boasts one of the country’s highest per capita rates of membership in the National Rifle association (NRA) , Mr. Obama’s stance that Second Amendment gun rights are compatible with new tough gun laws falls flat.

And it didn’t help when he said the state’s “bitter” small-town voters hurt by the economy were not supporting him because they “cling” to religion, guns and anti-immigrant views. MORE>>>>

The investigation into the polygamist sect has drawn some comparisons to another controversial church raided by federal agents 15 years ago. Paster Charles Pace walked CBS 42 through the churchyard turned graveyard where as many as 80 people died when a 51-day standoff with federal agents culminated in a fiery blaze. “To go in and take 416 children, that’s ridiculous. I mean, were they all being abused? That’s what they’re going to have to find out now. I don’t think it’s fair. I don’t think the government has a right to do that. They came in here too defending the children, but they ended up killing them,” Pace said. STORY>>>

THE DAVIDIAN RAID 15 YEARS LATER (OPINION)

APRIL 19th will mark the fifteenth anniversary of one of America’s most shameful events: the murders of dozens of helpless victims, including two pregnant women and twenty -one children, at the Branch Davidian compound assault in 1993. While at the time the FBI repeatedly insisted, even under oath, that they used no incendiary devices nor fired any gunshots, overwhelming evidence since the raid has proven that the FBI and BATF were directly responsible not only for the destruction of the Davidian buildings, but also for shooting unarmed Davidians, then using their official positions to conceal and destroy evidence of their crimes. READ MORE>>

LONDON, U.K. — A father has described his anger after he and his son were refused entry to their local swimming pool because they weren’t Muslims. David Toube and Harry, five, were turned away by staff from the men-only session.

“I asked whether my son and I could go as we were both male. I was told that the session was for Muslims only and that we could not be admitted.”

The council has now admitted that workers at Clissold Leisure Centre in Hackney, north London, made a mistake and offered the family an apology. SOURCE>>>

A drunken-driving suspect charged Thursday with second-degree murder after a 7-year-old boy was struck and killed had been wanted by police since December for failing to show up in court to answer a previous drunken-driving charge, according to prosecutors.

Hipolito Camora Hernandez, 30, of Parkertown Road in Four Oaks is now in the Johnston County jail on a host of charges related to the death of Marcus Lassiter, who was struck near Four Oaks on Sunday and died at Duke Hospital the next night. Read more »

U.S.A. — AS THE VALUE OF THE U.S. dollar declines, investing in U.S. defense firms becomes more attractive to foreign companies. That worries Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calf., who fears more foreign ownership will mean more pilfered defense technology secrets.

“We’ve got people with lots of cash” in the rest of the world and American companies “that are desperate for cash.” The increase of foreign entities buying U.S. defense companies “is going to be a problem for years to come,” Hunter said.

It’s not as bad as it was two years ago, said Kathy Watson, director of the DEFENSE SECURITY SERVICE. But improvements are coming slowly. The DSS is a little-known agency within the Defense Department that determines which companies qualify for access to classified information. It awards clearances to company officials and evaluates “foreign ownership, control or influence over U.S. defense companies. SOURCE>>>>>>>

Guadalupe, Arizona — An Illegal immigrant has been arrested on suspicion of raping and kidnapping a 15-year-old girl at her Guadalupe home, Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies said. The MCSO Special Victims Unit arrested Jose Dolores Montoya sanchez, 24. MORE>>>

Senator Obama counts among the writers who have influenced his thinking two giants of Jewish American letters, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. The Democratic presidential hopeful shared his admiration for the two authors yesterday at a meeting with Philadelphia-area Jewish leaders, addressing the crowd from the bima as his campaign passed out buttons with the candidate’s name spelled in Hebrew letters, according to a pool report released by the campaign.

…he went out of his way to accent his support for the Jewish state. For the first time, he pledged explicitly that if he won the presidency he would appoint an ambassador to the United Nations who would veto any anti-Semitic resolutions against Israel. “Part of the task, I think, of the United States and part of–part of the leadership I think I can prove is, I think I can be a powerful voice on the world stage in saying, ‘Let’s stop with the nonsense with respect to Israel,” he said. FULL ARTICLE>>>

A Westbury man who moonlighted as a children’s party clown was arrested on charges of possessing and promoting child pornography, Nassau police said Wednesday.

Alexander Zacarias, 40, of Sherman Street, was arraigned on nine counts of promoting sexual performance of a child and nine counts of possession of sexual performance of a child in First District Court in Hempstead Wednesday. He was held on bail of $400,000 bond or $200,000 cash, and is due back in court Friday.

Police said there was no evidence that Zacarias ever abused or photographed any children. Attempts to reach Zacarias’ family were unsuccessful Wednesday. He was represented by the Nassau Legal Aid Society, which could not be reached Wednesday. Read more »

YPSILANTI, Mich. — Police are looking for a man who allegedly broke into a Ypsilanti home and shot the homeowner in January.

Rajeah Alexander Murray is wanted on charges of assault with intent to commit murder, home invasion and armed robbery after police said Murray and another man, who was already charged and awaiting trial, broke into a home on Green Road. Read more »

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Henry Carroll got into trouble with the county when he agreed to look after his son Adam’s two dogs. Carroll’s son is overseas fighting in Iraq. The soldier is scheduled to return home in December, and his father says he is determined to make sure that when his son returns from his tour of duty, the dogs are waiting for him.

Carroll already had three dogs of his own. With five dogs, the county said he had two dogs too many.

Carroll got the army to write a letter saying two of the dogs belonged to his son, but county officials didn’t buy it. They said, “Since Adam didn’t sign it, it really might not be valid because it was signed by his platoon leader.” STORY>>>

Art major Aliza Shvarts ‘08 wants to make a statement.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process. MORE>>>

The initial logo of the Information Awareness Office of the Pentagon was an all-seeing eye fixed on the world. The office’s purpose was to fight terrorism by creating and integrating technologies that would allow for the “total information awareness” of all electronic data generated domestically. That data include Americans’ personal information in areas such as finances, travel and communications. It would then be sifted to find suspicious patterns. The program never got off the ground — or so we thought.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported the data-mining effort was merely shifted to the National Security Agency, a sprawling yet highly secret part of the federal government whose mission is to spy internationally.

According to the Journal, the spy agency now monitors “huge volumes of records of domestic e-mails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. “This information is analyzed by computer programs to look for anomalous patterns that could be used for terrorism leads. Apparently, none of it has been done with a court order or judicial oversight. ARTICLE>>>

PRESCOTT, Ariz. — A convicted rapist is accused of beating two women and holding them against their will when they each refused to have sex with him.

Prescott police said Kenny Gipson, 58, held a 39-year-old woman captive for two days last September after she refused his advances. Police said he also beat the woman with a cane.Earlier this month, Gipson took a 48-year-old woman to a Prescott motel and held her for two days against her will after she also refused to have sex with him, according to police. Read more »

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