The 1st Amendent Says WHAT?
Topic: Culture
WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) today delivered the following statement on the floor of the United States Senate addressing several social
issues facing the country:

"The Old Testament prophet Amos was a sheep herder who lived back in the Judean hills, away from the larger cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Compared to the intellectual urbanites like Isaiah and Jeremiah, he was just an unsophisticated country hick.

"But Amos had a unique grasp of political and social issues and his poetic literary skill was among the best of all the prophets. That familiar quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. about 'Justice will rush down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream' are Amos's words.

"Amos was the first to propose the concept of a universal God and not just some tribal deity. He also wrote that God demanded moral purity, not rituals and sacrifices. This blunt speaking moral conscience of his time warns in

Chapter 8, verse 11 of The Book of Amos, as if he were speaking to us today:

That 'the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord. 'And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.'

'A famine in the land'. Has anyone more accurately described the situation we face in America today? 'A famine of hearing the words of the Lord.'

"But some will say, Amos was just an Old Testament prophet - a minor one at that - who lived 700 years before Christ. That is true, so how about one of the most influential historians of modern times?

"Arnold Toynbee who wrote the acclaimed 12 volume A Study of History, once declared, 'Of the 22 civilizations that have appeared in history, 19 of them collapsed when they reached the moral state America is in today.'

"Toynbee died in 1975, before seeing the worst that was yet to come. Yes, Arnold Toynbee saw the famine. The 'famine of hearing the words of the Lord.' Whether it is removing a display of the Ten Commandments from a Courthouse or the Nativity Scene from a city square. Whether it is eliminating prayer in schools or eliminating 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance. Whether it is making a mockery of the sacred institution of marriage between a man and woman or, yes, telecasting around the world made-in-the-USA filth masquerading as entertainment.

"The Culture of Far Left America was displayed in a startling way during the Super Bowl's now infamous half-time show. A show brought to us courtesy of Value-Les Moonves and the pagan temple of Viacom-Babylon.

"I asked the question yesterday, how many of you have ever run over a skunk with your car? I have many times and I can tell you, the stink stays around for a long time. You can take the car through a car wash and it's still there. So the scent of this event will long linger in the nostrils of America.

"I'm not talking just about an exposed mammary gland with a pull-tab attached to it. Really no one should have been too surprised at that. Wouldn't one expect a bumping, humping, trashy routine entitled 'I'm going to get you naked' to end that way.

"Does any responsible adult ever listen to the words of this rap-crap? I'd quote you some of it, but the Sergeant of Arms would throw me out of here, as well he should. And then there was that prancing, dancing, strutting, rutting guy evidently suffering from jock itch because he kept yelling and grabbing his crotch. But then, maybe there's a crotch grabbing culture I'm unaware of.

"But as bad as all this was, the thing that yanked my chain the hardest was seeing that ignoramus with his pointed head stuck up through a hole he had cut in the flag of the United States of America, screaming about having 'a bottle of scotch and watching lots of crotch.' Think about that.

"This is the same flag that we pledge allegiance to. This is the flag that is draped over coffins of dead young uniformed warriors killed while protecting Kid Rock's bony butt. He should be tarred and feathered, and ridden out of this country on a rail. Talk about a good reality show, there's one for you.

"The desire and will of this Congress to meaningfully do anything about any of these so-called social issues is non existent and embarrassingly disgraceful. The American people are waiting and growing impatient with us. They want something done.

"I stand shoulder to shoulder [not only with my Senate co-sponsors and Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama but, more importantly,] with our Founding Fathers in the conception of religious liberty and the terribly wrong direction our modern judiciary has taken us in.

"Everyone today seems to think that the U.S. Constitution expressly provides for separation of church and state. Ask any ten people if that's not so. And I'll bet you most of them will say 'Well, sure.' And some will point out, 'it's in the First Amendment.'

"Wrong! Read it! It says, 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' Where is the word 'separate'? Where are the words 'church' or 'state.'

"They are not there. Never have been. Never intended to be. Read the Congressional Records during that four-month period in 1789 when the amendment was being framed in Congress. Clearly their intent was to prohibit a single denomination in exclusion of all others, whether it was Anglican or Catholic or some other.

"I highly recommend a great book entitled Original Intent by David Barton. It really gets into how the actual members of Congress, who drafted the First Amendment, expected basic Biblical principles and values to be present throughout public life and society, not separate from it.

"It was Alexander Hamilton who pointed out that 'judges should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty.' Bound down! That is exactly what is needed to be done. There was not a single precedent cited when school prayer was struck down in 1962.

"These judges who legislate instead of adjudicate, do it without being responsible to one single solitary voter for their actions. Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a brilliant young physician from Pennsylvania named Benjamin Rush.

"When Rush was elected to that First Continental Congress, his close friend Benjamin Franklin told him 'We need you. . . we have a great task before us, assigned to us by Providence.' Today, 228 years later there is still a great task before us assigned to us by Providence. Our Founding Fathers did not shirk their duty and we can do no less.

"So, if I am asked why - with all the pressing problems this nation faces today - why am I pushing these social issues and taking the Senate's valuable time? I will answer: Because, it is of the highest importance. Yes, there's a deficit to be concerned about in this country, a deficit of decency.

"So, as the sand empties through my hourglass at warp speed - and with my time running out in this Senate and on this earth, I feel compelled to speak out. For I truly believe that at times like this, silence is not golden. It is yellow."

Why There Has Been No Attack
Topic: Terrorism
Friday, January 7, 2005

Has U.S. threatened to vaporize Mecca?

Intelligence expert says nuke option is reason bin Laden has been quiet


? 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
Why hasn't Osama bin Laden's terror network executed an attack on U.S. soil since 9-11?

Simple, says Dr. Jack Wheeler, creator of an acclaimed intelligence website dubbed "the oasis for rational conservatives": The U.S. has threatened to nuke the Muslim holy city of Mecca should the terror leader strike America again.

On his website, To the Point, Wheeler explains how the Bush administration has identified the potential of wiping Mecca off the map as bin Laden's ultimate point of vulnerability - the Damoclean Sword hanging over his head.


"Israel ... recognizes that the Aswan Dam is Egypt's Damoclean Sword," writes Wheeler. "There is no possibility whatever of Egypt's winning a war with Israel, for if Aswan is blown, all of inhabited Egypt is under 20 feet of water. Once the Israelis made this clear to the Egyptians, the possibility of any future Egyptian attack on Israel like that of 1948, 1967, and 1972 is gone."

Wheeler says talk of bin Laden's Damoclean Sword has infiltrated the Beltway.

Writes Wheeler in his members-only column: "There has been a rumor floating in the Washington ether for some time now that George Bush has figured out what Sword of Damocles is suspended over Osama bin Laden's head. It's whispered among Capitol Hill staffers on the intel and armed services committees; White House NSC (National Security Council) members clam up tight if you begin to hint at it; and State Department neo-cons love to give their liberal counterparts cardiac arrhythmia by elliptically conversing about it in their presence.

"The whispers and hints and ellipses are getting louder now because the rumor explains the inexplicable: Why hasn't there been a repeat of 9-11? How can it be that after this unimaginable tragedy and Osama's constant threats of another, we have gone over three years without a single terrorist attack on American soil?"

Available only to subscribers of To the Point, Wheeler ends his column by explaining the effectiveness of the Mecca threat.

"Completely obliterating the terrorists' holiest of holies, rendering what is for them the world's most sacred spot a radioactive hole in the ground is retribution of biblical proportions - and those are the only proportions that will do the job.

"Osama would have laughed off such a threat, given his view that Americans are wussies who cut and run after a few losses, such as Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993. Part of Bush's rationale for invading Afghanistan and Iraq - obviously never expressed publicly - was to convince Osama that his threat to nuke Mecca was real. Osama hates America just as much as ever, but he is laughing no more."

Wheeler says bin Laden is "playing poker with a Texas cowboy holding the nuclear aces," so there's nothing al-Qaida could do that could come remotely close to risking obliterating Mecca.

Writes Wheeler: "So far, Osama has decided not to see if GW is bluffing. Smart move."

Tsunami's 'Global Warming' Link Branded 'Rubbish'
Topic: Climate
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
January 06, 2005

(CNSNews.com) - Attempts by a wide array of environmentalists and scientists to link the recent Asian earthquake and tsunami to human-caused "global warming" are "abject rubbish," according to another expert in the field from the University of Virginia.

"If one wants to make the argument that alterations in weather patterns have an effect on the stresses of the earth's tectonic plates, which are far beneath the ocean, one is ignoring virtually every physical aspect of the ocean," said Patrick J. Michaels, an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia. He spoke with the Cybercast News Service Wednesday.

Michaels, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of a new book "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media," believes that claims of human-caused catastrophic "global warming" are scientifically unfounded.

Michaels said he was especially bothered by a report from the Russian News and Information Agency Novosti, which last week quoted Russian scientist Arthur Chilingarov as saying that the cause of the earthquake and tsunami were "probably global climate change." Chilingarov is the vice speaker of the State Duma and co-chairman of the organizational committee that is planning the International Polar Year in 2007.

According to Novosti, Chilingarov also believes that "scientists have registered lately a change of the average temperature, which is now growing at fantastic rates." These changing temperatures, he added, are allowing "the atmosphere and oceans to accumulate additional energy," which can cause natural disasters like the recent underwater earthquake and tsunami.

Michaels rejected the Russian news report.

"This is just abject rubbish. That is all I can say. That is the most charitable thing I can say," Michaels said. "What happens at the surface of the ocean is not reflected at all in any measurable fashion at the depth of which the earthquake took place."

If Chilingarov's assertions were correct, Michaels said, "then there would be a high correlation between tsunamis and El Ninos because El Nino warms the ocean substantially over regions that are tectonically active." El Ninos are defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as disruptions of the ocean-atmosphere system that impact global weather.

Arguing the link between 'global warming' and tsunami

A wide range of individuals and organizations have used the tsunami disaster as an example of how "global warming" can affect the planet.

The Discovery Channel website posted an article on Wednesday, explaining that "global warming" is one of the "four causes of tsunamis" and quoting tsunami scientist Neal Driscoll from the University of California at San Diego.

"Even global warming could theoretically play a role in weakening undersea slopes if frozen gas hydrates locked in deep-sea slopes are warmed enough to shift from solid to gas state," stated Driscoll. "That shift of the abundant deep-sea deposits could bloat slopes with gas and cause them to collapse, sending tsunami-generating pulses all the way to the surface," the Discovery Channel article explained.

Sir David King, the chief scientific adviser for the government of the United Kingdom, said he believes that the recent tsunami served as a warming of what was yet to come through human-caused climate change.

"What is happening in the Indian Ocean underlines the importance of the earth's system to our ability to live safely," King told BBC radio last week. "And what we are talking about in terms of climate change is something that is really driven by our own use of fossil fuels, so this is something we can manage."

King, who in 2004, said the threat of "global warming" was greater than any threat from terrorism, believes the only solution to catastrophic climate change is to change the world's "energy industry - in other words, to move away from fossil fuels."

University of California professor Naomi Oreskes, a member of the university's Department of History and Science Studies Program, also linked climate change to tsunamis this week.

"I wouldn't want to exaggerate the interrelationship to the tsunami. It doesn't have anything to do with global warming, it has to do with earthquakes," Oreskes told Voice of America on Monday.

But Oreskes said global climate changes, which she believes are impending, will have tsunami-like effects.

"As sea levels begin to rise, things like coastal flooding will become more and more common and it will be some of the poorest and most vulnerable people of the world that will be most severely effected by that," Oreskes said, predicting future greenhouse gas caused climate changes.

Oreskes wrote an essay in Science Magazine last December, entitled "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," which was ridiculed by skeptics of "global warming."

Farah Sofa a spokesman for the environmental group Friends of the Earth in Indonesia told Agence France Presse last week, "We can expect in the coming years similar events happening as a result of global warming and therefore help and prevention are the responsibility of the Northern countries as well."

Reuters news service environmental correspondent Alister Doyle, wrote a Dec. 27 article, explaining that "a creeping rise in sea levels tied to global warming, pollution and damage to coral reefs may make coastlines even more vulnerable to disasters like tsunamis or storms in [the] future." Doyle attributed the information in his story to "experts," but did not include any quotes directly referring to the theory of global warming.

'Four inches means nothing'

Michaels dismissed the idea that "global warming" induced rising sea levels will produce a catastrophe.

"The best estimate for sea level rise for the next half century is about four inches ...The recent tsunami was 40 feet. Four inches means nothing to 40 feet," Michaels said.

Noting that past tsunamis have been as high as 120 feet, Michaels said any comparison between a potential four-inch rise of sea level and a tsunami is misguided.

"It is the difference between your index finger and a ten-story building," he said.

Michaels also said that sea levels in Asia, where the tsunami struck, have actually been declining.

"Satellite data published in 2001 in Science magazine ... show that the region where the tsunamis were most devastating has, in general, experienced a recent decline in sea level," Michaels said.

"Additionally, the long-term record of sea level changes for Bombay (India) was published by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1995. It shows a net decline in sea level in the last 50 years," he added.

What happened to the Turkeys Mr. Conyers?
Topic: Political Scumbags
The director of a Detroit food bank wants to know what happened to 60 turkeys -- 720 pounds of frozen birds -- that his charity gave to members of U.S. Rep. John Conyers' local staff two days before Thanksgiving to give to needy people.

Conyers' Detroit office promised an accounting of any turkey distribution by Dec. 27, but the Gleaners Community Food Bank had received no paperwork as of Tuesday, said the charity's director, Agostinho Fernandes.

Fernandes said he became suspicious that the turkeys didn't get to poor people after hearing from a friend that a federal court worker had said he was offered free turkeys from a member of Conyers' staff.

REF: http://www.freep.com/news/locway/turkey5e_20050105.htm