South Carolina Political Skeletons Emerge

We expected that with the Governor fighting for his job, and his enemies in the legislature fighting to preserve the "good ol' boy" status quo with the place-holder they would like to install in that job, some dirt would begin to fly.

This story about Andre Bauer is probably only the beginning. Look for rumors about a certain Lexington Senator to be "fleshed out" in the days ahead, too.

In our view, the Governor has nothing left to lose, should finish his term, and while South Carolina will probably take a drubbing from late-night comedians, what is beginning to unfold may lead to a much needed house cleaning in the General Assembly.

South Carolina Education Association Wracked by Union Troubles

A national education newsletter that focuses on labor issues is reporting that the South Carolina affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA) is having union troubles of its own.

According to the Education Intelligence Agency, "negotiations between the South Carolina Education Association (SCEA) and its staff are souring, with the staff union president asserting SCEA executives told employees 'that the South Carolina Education Association is two years from closing its doors.'"

The newsletter reports "this may be a negotiating tactic, but SCEA is a mess."

South Carolina's relatively small teachers' union has been losing membership for years to alternative organizations that offer teachers insurance and professional development, without the NEA's radical promotion of abortion, the homosexual agenda, and other left-wing causes.

Reflections on the Kennedy Funeral

From LifeSiteNews
Commentary by Steve Jalsevac

I am not dismayed or downhearted, just amazed at the depth of human weakness and self delusion revealed by the Kennedy funeral. Let me explain, and also urge what should be the response of pro-life people be to this event.

It was a fascinating funeral with many touching moments and fine speeches. Ted Kennedy was shown to have presented in many ways a very attractive image - an exceptionally generous person, a good father, a faithful friend to many, an accomplished man of the world despite many personal setbacks and hardships.

For Kennedy, Obama, and many of the pro-abortion politicians at the funeral - image is crucial. They rely upon it to influence the public to trust them and to support their political goals. They know that the public can be lulled away from critical thinking and attention to facts if political image is well cultivated and presented.

As we have repeated a number of times in our coverage of Ted Kennedy's illness and then death, we do not judge his relationship with God. No one can do that. But his public record is another thing. We can and must judge that. He profoundly helped to advance the Culture of Death and other developments harmful to life, family and faith in America.

As for the grandiose funeral broadcast around the world - the Mass, the Church, the priests and Cardinal O'Malley - all appeared to be merely useful props for the liberal establishment to exploit. That establishment was given the keys to do whatever they wanted.

This was not a funeral to beseech God on behalf of the dead and to remind the living of what God expects from them in this life and that they too will meet their maker. That is the purpose of a Catholic funeral. Nothing is taken for granted. We beseech God's mercy at a Catholic funeral. A Catholic funeral reminds all that there is eternal reward for the faithful but also, a price for sin, a need for repentance, and a need to pray for the dead - since there is indeed a Heaven, a Purgatory and a Hell.

However, the Catholic Church in Boston and Cardinal O'Malley totally capitulated. I felt embarrassment and shame for the good Cardinal.

Saint Kennedy was canonized with not even one appropriate reference from anyone during the entire proceedings addressing his extreme pro-abortion record. By implication, everything that the senator from Massachusetts did in his political life was affirmed during that Catholic Church event.

The tyranny of moral relativism triumphed. The false, very selective, "spirit of Vatican II" social justice version of Catholicism dominated. The beatitudes taken out of context from the gospel can give false assuance and soothingly warp consciences for those who live personal lives in serious violation of that real gospel.

The message from the Boston Catholic Basilica to all Catholic politicians, to all Catholics in positions of authority and to the world was clear. In the end, abortion doesn't really matter. Same-sex marriage is not really an important issue. Church moral teachings in general are just talking points for consideration. And finally, the central teaching authority of the Church is an outdated concept. It does not matter what Christ, the Ten Commandments, the Pope's and the saints have said. Image, worldly respect, your local bishop or priest friend or theologian trump all the other universal things of the faith.

Much of what took place in the Basilica, regarding Kennedy's political legacy, was missing real love and real charity. Christ showed what true love was and they crucified him for it.

Despite all this, we at LifeSiteNews will continue to do what we must. Pro-life, pro-family leaders will soldier on.

A few years ago in Toronto, the late Fr. Richard Neuhaus addressed the issue of what our response should be to disappointments in the pro-life struggle. He stated,

"There are many who do not understand that this is the great civil rights movement of our time, that this is the great human rights movement of our time… and the future will vindicate that we are the avant guard - we are the vanguard.

There are those in the pro-abortion camp who view their position as the progressive position. They are wrong. It is not progressive but barbaric.

This cause will not let you go. Will the Gospel of Life prevail? Oh, yes. The Gospel of Life will prevail. When and in what way we do not know. I am sure some of you know the lines of T.S. Elliot…"For us, there is only trying, the rest is not our business." I understand Elliot to be saying, "the rest is not our business, the rest is God's business."

In the First Things article, Scandal Time, regarding the clergy sexual abuse scandals, Neuhaus made some comments that would also seem pertinent to Church tolerance of pro-abortion Catholic politicians. Neuhaus wrote,

"What is this crisis about? The answer is that this crisis is about three things: fidelity, fidelity, and fidelity. The fidelity of bishops and priests to the teaching of the Church and to their solemn vows; the fidelity of bishops in exercising oversight in ensuring obedience to that teaching and to those vows; and the fidelity of the lay faithful in holding bishops and priests accountable.

I have been told that the proposition is "controversial," but I suggest it is almost embarrassingly self-evident: if bishops and priests had been faithful to the teaching of the Church and their sacred vows, there would be no scandal. Those who would confuse the subject reflexively reach for complexity. No, I am sorry, it is as simple as that. We are reaping the whirlwind of widespread infidelity."

And finally, a LifeSiteNews reader sent us this excerpt from an address by Archbishop Fulton Sheen to the Supreme Convention of the Knights of Columbus in June 1972,

"Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops, and your religious act like religious."

Doctor Admits Euthanizing Patient During Hurricane Katrina

From LifeSiteNews
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

A doctor has admitted that he gave orders for a lethal dose of medication to be administered to a patient under his care during the hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005 - a decision that he says he does not regret having made.

Dr. Ewing Cook said that as staff at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans were struggling to evacuate patients from the flooded building, he gave the order to give Jannie Burgess, 79, who was dying of uterine cancer and kidney failure, a dose of morphine that he knew would kill her.

"Do you mind just increasing the morphine and giving her enough until she goes?" Cook said he asked the patient's nurse, and then wrote "Pronounced dead at" on the patient's chart and left it blank to be filled in later.

Cook described the "double effect" of morphine, which is frequently used to control severe pain or discomfort but can also slow breathing and, if suddenly introduced in much higher doses, lead to death.

"If you don't think that by giving a person a lot of morphine you're not prematurely sending them to their grave, then you're a very naïve doctor," Cook said.

"To me, it was a no-brainer, and to this day I don't feel bad about what I did," Cook told ProPublica, an independent nonprofit investigative organization.

"There's no question I hastened her demise," he said. "I gave her medicine so I could get rid of her faster, get the nurses off the floor."

Cook also described another area of the hospital that was crowded with patients on cots and stretchers where he considered euthanizing the ones that had "do not resuscitate (DNR)" on their charts. "We didn't do it because we had too many witnesses," he told ProPublica. "That's the honest-to-God truth."

Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell told AP he would not reopen an investigation launched by his predecessor, Charles Foti, because of the disclosures by Dr. Cook.

In that investigation another doctor and two nurses were arrested on charges of second-degree homicide, but a Grand Jury declined to indict them.

Dr. Anna Pou, a surgeon who specializes in working with cancer patients, and nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo, who had admitted to administering lethal doses of medication to patients during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, were offered immunity from prosecution by Attorney General Foti, before testifying to a Grand Jury that four patients died after being administered what Foti called a "lethal cocktail" of drugs.

Dr. Pou denied the charges, insisting that she did not support euthanasia and claimed to have given only comfort care for the patients.

However, court documents asserted that witnesses had testified that Dr. Pou and the two nurses took syringes full of drugs to a ward for the chronically-ill and injected four patients. Thirty-four patients died in Memorial Medical Center following the Katrina disaster, more than in any comparable-sized hospital in the drowned city.

A coroner's report stated that more than half of the bodies taken from Memorial tested positive for morphine or midazolam, or both. Robert Middleberg, the director of the toxicology laboratory where the autopsy samples were tested, said the high drug concentrations found in many of the patients stuck out "like a sore thumb."

The ProPublica report cites University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan, who, after reviewing the records of the patients who died and the coroner's report, concluded that nine patients were euthanized, and that the way the drugs were given was "not consistent with the ethical standards of palliative care that prevail in the United States." Those standards are clear, Caplan wrote, in that the death of a patient cannot be the goal of a doctor's treatment.

The complete investigative article from ProPublica is available here.

Experts See Double-Digit Dem Losses

Americans are clearly aroused and angry that they have been duped by a smooth-talking Marxist.

The loss of freedoms, government takeover of the US economy, recruiting citizens to become informants and snitch on their neighbors, threats to free speech and the possible shutdown of talk radio, spending, taxes and deficits designed to exacerbate a national crisis, socialized medicine, health care rationing, contempt for traditional American allies and support for Marxist movements in this hemisphere and around the world, and unelected commissars in the White House governing outside the Constitution and any accountability to Congress, will not be tolerated by the American people.

However, we believe that the Marxist thugs in the White House are so contemptuous of the Constitution and American freedoms, that they will do whatever it takes to avoid the constitutional and political consequences of their program. We will not be surprised if they create an incident in which they will seize ultimate power. Whatever the outcome of this dangerous passage, the American people have awakened to what they are about. The Politico holds out the hope of big changes in Congress:

Experts See Double-Digit Dem Losses

From Politico

After an August recess marked by raucous town halls, troubling polling data and widespread anecdotal evidence of a volatile electorate, the small universe of political analysts who closely follow House races is predicting moderate to heavy Democratic losses in 2010.

Some of the most prominent and respected handicappers can now envision an election in which Democrats suffer double-digit losses in the House — not enough to provide the 40 seats necessary to return the GOP to power but enough to put them within striking distance.

Top political analyst Charlie Cook, in a special August 20 update to subscribers, wrote that “the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and congressional Democrats.”

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Kennedy and the KGB

From American Thinker
By Paul Kengor

Shortly after the announcement of Ted Kennedy's death, I had already received several interview requests. I declined them, not wanting to be uncharitable to the man upon his death. Since then, I've seen the need to step up and provide some clarification.

The issue is a remarkable 1983 KGB document on Kennedy, which I published in my 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperCollins). The document is a May 14, 1983 memo from KGB head Victor Chebrikov to his boss, the odious Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov, designated with the highest classification. It concerns a confidential offer to the Soviet leadership by Senator Kennedy. The target: President Ronald Reagan. (A pdf file of the original Russian language document and an English translation is available here.)

With Kennedy's death, this stunning revelation is again making the rounds, especially after Rush Limbaugh flagged it in his "Stack of Stuff." I'm being inundated with emails, asking basically two questions: 1) is the document legitimate; and 2) what does it allege of Senator Kennedy?

First off, yes, the document is legitimate. If it were not, I would have never reported it. Over the years, from my book to radio and web interviews, I've provided specifics. Briefly summarized, here are the basics:

The document was first reported in a February 2, 1992 article in the London Times, titled, "Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file," by reporter Tim Sebastian. Russian President Boris Yeltsin had opened the Soviet archives. Sebastian discovered the document in the Central Committee archives specifically. When his article appeared in the Times, other on-site researchers dashed to the archives and grabbed their own copy. Those archives have been resealed.

The Times merely quoted the document and ran a tiny photo of its heading. Once I got ahold of it later, I published the entire text (English translation) in my book.

Importantly, when I published the document, Senator Kennedy's office didn't dispute its authenticity, instead ambiguously (and briefly) arguing with its "interpretation." This was clever. The senator's office didn't specify whether this interpretation problem was a matter of my personal misunderstanding of the document or the misunderstanding of the document's author, Chebrikov. Chebrikov couldn't be reached for comment; he was dead.

So, what was the offer?

The subject head, carried under the words, "Special Importance," read: "Regarding Senator Kennedy's request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Y. V. Andropov." According to the memo, Senator Kennedy was "very troubled" by U.S.-Soviet relations, which Kennedy attributed not to the murderous tyrant running the USSR but to President Reagan. The problem was Reagan's "belligerence."

This was allegedly made worse by Reagan's stubbornness. "According to Kennedy," reported Chebrikov, "the current threat is due to the President's refusal to engage any modification to his politics." That refusal, said the memo, was exacerbated by Reagan's political success, which made the president surer of his course, and more obstinate -- and, worst of all, re-electable.

On that, the fourth and fifth paragraphs of Chebrikov's memo got to the thrust of Kennedy's offer: The senator was apparently clinging to hope that President Reagan's 1984 reelection bid could be thwarted. Of course, this seemed unlikely, given Reagan's undeniable popularity. So, where was the president vulnerable?

Alas, Kennedy had an answer, and suggestion, for his Soviet friends: In Chebrikov's words, "The only real threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations. These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign."

Therein, Chebrikov got to the heart of the U.S. senator's offer to the USSR's general secretary: "Kennedy believes that, given the state of current affairs, and in the interest of peace, it would be prudent and timely to undertake the following steps to counter the militaristic politics of Reagan."

Of these, step one would be for Andropov to invite the senator to Moscow for a personal meeting. Said Chebrikov: "The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they would be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA."

The second step, the KGB head informed Andropov, was a Kennedy strategy to help the Soviets "influence Americans." Chebrikov explained: "Kennedy believes that in order to influence Americans it would be important to organize in August-September of this year [1983], televised interviews with Y. V. Andropov in the USA." The media savvy Massachusetts senator recommended to the Soviet dictator that he seek a "direct appeal" to the American people. And, on that, "Kennedy and his friends," explained Chebrikov, were willing to help, listing Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters (both listed by name in the memo) as good candidates for sit-down interviews with the dictator.

Kennedy concluded that the Soviets needed, in effect, some PR help, given that Reagan was good at "propaganda" (the word used in the memo). The senator wanted them to know he was more than eager to lend a hand.

Kennedy wanted the Soviets to saturate the American media during such a visit. Chebrikov said Kennedy could arrange interviews not only for the dictator but for "lower level Soviet officials, particularly from the military," who "would also have an opportunity to appeal directly to the American people about the peaceful intentions of the USSR."

This was apparently deemed crucial because of the dangerous threat posed not by Andropov's regime but -- in Kennedy's view -- by Ronald Reagan and his administration. It was up to the Kremlin folks to "root out the threat of nuclear war," "improve Soviet-American relations," and "define the safety for the world."

Quite contrary to the ludicrous assertions now being made about Ted Kennedy working jovially with Ronald Reagan, Kennedy, in truth, thought Reagan was a trigger-happy buffoon, and said so constantly, with vicious words of caricature and ridicule. The senator felt very differently about Yuri Andropov. As Chebrikov noted in his memo, "Kennedy is very impressed with the activities of Y. V. Andropov and other Soviet leaders."

Alas, the memo concluded with a discussion of Kennedy's own presidential prospects in 1984, and a note that Kennedy "underscored that he eagerly awaits a reply to his appeal."

What happened next? We will never know. None of the Kennedy admirers and court composers who serve as "journalists" bothered to ask, even with decades available to pose questions, beginning back in January 1992 when the highly reputable London Times broke the story.

In 2006, when my book was released, there was a virtual media blackout on coverage of the document, with the exception of conservative media: talk-radio, Rush Limbaugh, some websites, and mention on FoxNews by Brit Hume. Amazingly, I didn't even get calls from mainstream reporters seeking to shoot down the story. I had prepared in great detail to be grilled on national television, picturing the likes of Katie Couric needling me. I didn't need to worry.

I worked up a detailed op-ed on the document, where I even played devil's advocate by defending Kennedy, trying to get at his thinking, being as fair as possible. No major newspapers would touch it. The Boston Globe editors refused to acknowledge it or reply to my emails. The editor at the New York Times confessed to being "fascinated" by the piece but conceded that he wouldn't "be able to get it in."

One editor at a West Coast newspaper, a genuinely fair liberal, considered it carefully. We went back and forth. I was shocked to see that neither the editor nor his staff would do any investigating, not placing a single phone call to Kennedy's office. In the end, the editor rejected the piece, telling me: "I just can't believe Kennedy would do something that stupid."

Alas, here we are now, after Kennedy's death, and I'm reliving the same experience, as no one from the mainstream media has contacted me. Liberal reporters lionized Ted Kennedy in life and have begun the canonization process in death. They are liberal activists first, and journalists second.

Finally, a postscript for these liberal Democrat "journalists:" We know they don't care that Ted Kennedy did this to Ronald Reagan. Fine. Well, how about this? As the Mitrokhin Archives reveal, Senator Kennedy did something similar to President Jimmy Carter in 1980 -- his own political flesh and blood.

Does that story interest liberal reporters? No. I likewise noted that gem in 2006. I didn't get a single media inquiry.

It will be left to future generations to examine these truths. As for Senator Ted Kennedy's motivations for doing what he did with the Soviet leadership? Alas, now we can definitively say, he will never tell us. The liberal media protected him, all the way to the grave.

Paul Kengor is author of The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperPerennial, 2007) and professor of political science at Grove City College. His latest book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007).

Rasmussen: 57% Would Vote to Replace Entire Congress

From Rasmussen Reports

If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch of legislators.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure how they would vote.

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"O God Our Help In Ages Past"

From Our Friends at Piddingworth

A Homily by Father Franklyn M. McAfee - "Hope Directs Our Wayward Hearts to the Kingdom"

"Hope in a Prison of Despair" by Evelyn Pickering De Morgan

Homily of Reverend Franklyn M. McAfee, D.D.
Pastor Emeritus

St. John the Beloved Catholic Church
McLean, Virginia

August 19, 2007

Sir Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation: The Hero as Artist"

In this fifth episode of Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation," he examines "The Hero as Artist" and looks at how Pope Julius II sponsored men like Michelangelo and Raphael.

Senator Kennedy's Letter of Treason to Yuri Andropov

Were his name Edward Moore, he would not have been elected to the Senate. Had anyone else left a dying woman at the scene of an accident, he would have served prison time. Had a Russian betrayed his country in the way described below, he would have been shot.

From Canada Free Press
By William R. Mann

Backgound: In the early 80s, I was assigned in Berlin when Reagan was forcing the hand of the USSR to deal with our resoluteness in NATO and the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in the forward area.

Calling the Soviet bluff and bluster, Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II acted in concert and strength to uphold Solidarity and to force the Soviets hand to either engage in a new arms race or negotiate for real reductions in nukes.

I saw, first hand, these events unfolding during my posting as a “Foreign Area Officer” from 1982-85. As a young Major at that time, my job entailed reporting on cultural, political, and certain intelligence information in Berlin and Germany [East and West].

The European disarmament movement, as we suspected back then, was funded by the USSR, other world communist and socialist organizations and many well-meaning, but duped “Liberal” citizens in the USA.

Ted Kennedy and his Liberal Brethren were engaged in the larger, anti-American, Soviet-orchestrated world disarmament and peace movement. They viewed our support of NATO in facing down a menacing Soviet build-up Eastern Europe as a provocative move. To be generous toward their motives, I will only say that history has shown that they were fools at best. Reagan correctly saw the Soviets as a hollow system on the verge of collapse.

This authenticated letter [link], uncovered when the KGB files were opened after the fall of the Soviet Union expose Kennedy’s duplicity in dealing with the Soviets behind the scenes and without permission of the USG. The POTUS alone is charged with negotiating with foreign nations per the USC.

This letter was first uncovered by the London times. The blog entry is from 2006.

So when the Left and the Left Media idolize this man, let us remember this narcissistic deed as well as his savage treatment of Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, Mary Jo Kopechne, and the millions of aborted babies who died during this man’s 36 year legacy of supporting abortion.

His salvation is up to God. Say a prayer for mercy, but remember.

BTW: These same KGB files showed that the Liberal-darling liar and spy Alger Hiss was among many others, including a US Congressman, who were, indeed, communists working for the USSR.

So read the posting and pay attention to the way things work in the espionage business, then and now. Pay attention to the lessons of history and beware those who still wish to ignore the facts. Things are not always what they seem, and people are not always who/what they profess to be.

Bill Would Give President Emergency Control of Internet

From CNet News
By Declan McCullagh

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."

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State Govs Saying 'No thanks' to Mystery Laptops

From Yahoo News
By Lawrence Messina, Associated Press Writer

Even during tight budgetary times, a growing handful of state governors are proving too wary to accept laptop computers that have shown up at their offices this month, unsolicited.

Officials in West Virginia, Vermont, Wyoming and Washington state have reported receiving between three and five laptops, each over the course of two separate deliveries — but none had ordered any of them.

"They immediately raised a red flag," said Matt Turner, spokesman for West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin. "No one said, 'Hey, we got a free gift.'"

The laptops were made by Hewlett-Packard or come from its Compaq brand. The world's leading PC maker intercepted a shipment to at least one other state, according to a bulletin issued by the National Governors Association in response to the suspicious deliveries.

"HP is aware that fraudulent state government orders recently have been placed for small amounts of HP equipment. HP took prompt corrective action to address the fraudulent orders and is working with law enforcement personnel on a criminal investigation," the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said in a statement, declining further comment.

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Obama 'Czar' on 9/11: Blame 'U.S. Imperialism'!

White House 'rowdy communist' held vigil for Muslims

From WorldNetDaily
By Aaron Klein

One day after the 9/11 attacks, the organization founded by President Obama's "green jobs czar" held a vigil in which it expressed solidarity with Arab and Muslim Americans as well as what it called the victims of "U.S. imperialism" around the world.

WND previously reported Van Jones, special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is an admitted black nationalist and radical communist.

Jones was the leader and founder of a radical group, the communist revolutionary organization Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM.

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Most Americans Oppose Same-Sex 'Marriage'

Research still shows the majority of Americans are against homosexual "marriage."

From OneNewsNow
By Charlie Butts

Carroll Doherty is a spokesman for the Pew Research Center, which conducted the research. "We found 35 percent overall in favor of it, [with] 54 percent opposed," he says. "The opposition is slightly higher than it was the last time about a year earlier, up from 49 percent, but these attitudes have been fairly stable for the past few years."

Then researchers asked participants their opinion of same-gender civil unions that grant most of the privileges of traditional marriage. "You've got 53 percent [in] favor. You really do get just a slight majority in favor of it, 39 percent opposed," Doherty adds. "So you see that [same-sex] marriage obviously draws much more opposition...."

The research indicated that African-Americans as well as born-again Christians are against homosexual marriage. About half of Democrats favor it, while Republicans oppose it nearly five-to-one.

ABC, NBC Won't Air Ad Critical of Obama's Health Care Plan

Why don't these state propaganda organs admit that they are arms of the White House Press Office and apply for federal funding?

From Fox News
By Joshua Rhett Miller


The refusal by ABC and NBC to run a national ad critical of President Obama's health care reform plan is raising questions from the group behind the spot -- particularly in light of ABC's health care special aired in prime time last June and hosted at the White House.

The 33-second ad by the League of American Voters, which features a neurosurgeon who warns that a government-run health care system will lead to the rationing of procedures and medicine, began airing two weeks ago on local affiliates of ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS. On a national level, however, ABC and NBC have refused to run the spot in its present form.

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Key Democrat Suggests Party Moderates 'Brain Dead'

From Breitbart
By Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer


A key House liberal suggested Thursday that party moderates who've pushed for changes in health care legislation are "brain dead" and out for insurance company campaign donations.

Moderate Blue Dog Democrats "just want to cause trouble," said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., who heads the health subcommittee on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

"They're for the most part, I hate to say, brain dead, but they're just looking to raise money from insurance companies and promote a right-wing agenda that is not really very useful in this whole process," Stark told reporters on a conference call.

A spokeswoman for the Blue Dog caucus did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment.

Thursday's call was being hosted by the liberal group Campaign for America's Future to release a report making the case for a strong new public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers as part of any health overhaul legislation.

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Ted Kennedy: The Senator of Sleaze Who Was a Drunk Sexual Bully... and Left a Young Woman to Die

As the media poodles continue the hagiography of this boozy philanderer, and the Obama White House plans the most carefully choreographed infomercial since Paul Wellstone's funeral, here's a profile of Ted Kennedy grounded in reality.

From The Daily Mail
By Charlie Laurence

Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy stood for sleaze. Bloated and drunken, he used his standing in the Kennedy clan to chase vulnerable women - which brought his dream of reaching the White House to a shameful end.

The hope of America that went so wrong: (From left) Jack, Bobby and Ted Kennedy in July 1960

He was the youngest of the four Kennedy brothers, and by far the longest lived.

Incredibly, he was in line to inherit his brother John F. Kennedy's legendary presidency, but his chances were dashed following the drowning of the pretty, young campaign assistant Mary Jo Kopechne.

Forever known as the Chappaquiddick Incident after the Massachusetts island where it took place, the scandal in 1969 broke the Kennedy grip on the White House.

A drunk Ted had been driving back from a party to the family 'compound' on Martha's Vineyard when he veered off a bridge and into a deep tidal dyke.

Mary Jo was in the back seat and, while he claimed he was just giving her a lift back to her hotel, it was widely thought that he had picked her up for sex. Kennedy swam ashore to save himself, but left Mary Jo to drown - in fact, it was even worse than that.

It was nine hours before he reported the accident. In the meantime, he walked back to his motel, complained to the manager about a noisy party, took a shower, went to sleep, ordered newspapers when he woke up and spoke to a friend and two lawyers before finally calling the police.

Divers later estimated that if he had called them immediately, they would have had time to pull out Mary Jo. She had not drowned, but had survived in an air pocket inside the car - she was asphyxiated only when the oxygen ran out several hours later.

As always, Ted used the family name to save his neck. In any other state but Massachusetts, the Kennedys' home turf, and with any other name, he would have been charged with homicide.

Instead, he escaped with a slap on the wrist: a two-year suspended sentence and the loss of his driving licence for a year. He had been allowed to plead guilty to no more than the charge of leaving the scene of an accident.

Kennedy lawyers arranged for him to pay £55,000 to the Kopechne family from his own pocket with a further £30,000 from his insurance. Mary Jo's mother later said: 'I don't think he ever said he was sorry.'

At the height of the scandal, Kennedy went on TV to explain himself in an extraordinary 13-minute address in which he denied driving drunk and rejected rumours of
'immoral conduct' with Kopechne.

He said he was haunted by 'irrational' thoughts immediately after the accident, and wondered 'whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys'.

He said his failure to report the accident right away was 'indefensible'.

Yet the tragedy and his actions appalled millions of Americans.

Tragic: The wreckage of Ted Kennedy's car in which he left Mary Jo

Edward Moore Kennedy was born on February 22, 1932, and took over the U.S. Senate seat once held by JFK in 1962. He was 30, the youngest age allowed.

By this point in the family's extraordinary history, JFK - John Fitzgerald Kennedy - was President and the next in line, Robert 'RFK' Kennedy, was Attorney General. Their eldest brother, Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr, had died in World War II.

Ted at first impressed his family and his electorate with hard work and legislative skill in the Senate.

When JFK was assassinated just a year later, Ted was at work on a committee and reportedly stood stunned and unable to move when he heard.

The assassination would prove to be the opening shot in the destruction of the family that in 1960 had held the promise of an era of unprecedented hope in the U.S.

Less than a year after the assassination, Ted experienced his own brush with death in a plane crash. The pilot and one of his Senate aides were killed. He was left with a permanent back injury, broken ribs and a punctured lung.

He was immobilised for seven months, but the family's dominance of Massachusetts politics was so powerful that he nevertheless easily won his first re-election.

In 1964, as his brother 'Bobby' Kennedy began to prepare for his own accession to the White House in the 1968 election campaign, the younger Kennedy made his name in the Senate by steering crucial reforms through Washington with President Lyndon Johnson.

But then RFK was gunned down in Los Angeles and Ted Kennedy became de facto head of the family.

The shattering blow left him barely able to deliver his brother's funeral eulogy in New York's St Patrick's Cathedral. He retreated from politics to spend the next ten weeks brooding and sailing alone off Cape Cod.

But then he stood before the TV cameras once again to announce: 'Like my brothers before me, I pick up the fallen standard. Sustained by the memory of our priceless years together, I shall carry forward the special commitment to justice, excellence and courage that distinguished their lives.'

It was not to be. The steamroller Kennedy political machine, combined with his popular opposition to the then raging Vietnam War, made him favourite for the 1972 presidential election, but the drunken drive that killed Mary Jo snuffed out his bid.

Edward Kennedy's character flaws would have sidelined any man from a lesser family before his career had begun. Schooled in the height of privilege, like his brothers, at exclusive boarding 'prep' schools, Kennedy went on to Harvard.

But he was expelled from that Ivy League bastion for persuading another undergraduate to take his Spanish exams for him. It was an episode that should have served as a warning to the voters.

Kennedy joined the Army to redeem himself and was later readmitted to Harvard. He followed the classic path of the American elite to law school, graduated and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.

But he did not take a single case. He believed that, like his brothers, he was destined for greatness. As he could not stand for the Senate until he was 30, the Kennedy machine arranged for a 'stooge' candidate to hold the family seat for two years, when JFK left it for the White House.

Ted won his first election easily, but not before his rival for the Democratic nomination remarked with prescience: 'If your name was simply Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a joke.'

As he entered the Senate, Kennedy was admired for his commanding 6ft 2in stature and the good looks that seemed a family blessing. But he was already drinking and womanising with the greed that has become known as a vice of Kennedy men.

Keeping such a vice under wraps seemed to run in the blood (as did charisma). His father, Joe, the patriarch who had got away with bootlegging in the Prohibition years to establish the family fortune, had also behaved that way.

While Ted drank and took advantage of compliant women in Washington, his wife Joan stayed at home in Boston to look after his three children. Like her sister-in-law Jacqui, she seemed to have learned that Kennedy women had to put up with humiliation.

The effort ruined her health, however. Kennedy's unending philandering turned her into an alcoholic and, in 1983, she could take no more.

She could no longer stand the hypocrisy of her husband posing for the public as if he lived for family values. She divorced, publicly confessed to her alcoholism and helped shatter what was left of the Kennedy aura.

Charisma, political skill, good timing and ruthlessness had enabled the family to dominate U.S. public life, despite foibles from links with Chicago gangsters to the sexual arrogance that had, according to legend, seen both JFK and RFK seduce Marilyn Monroe.

A writer once noted: 'Ted Kennedy born and bred to act like the last of the Regency rakes: to be a boor when it pleases him, to take what he wants, to treat women as score markers in the game of sexual sport and to revel in high stakes risks.'

His brothers got away with it, but Ted Kennedy's divorce removed the last bounds of shame and he plunged into a life that left him looking like a Saturday night drunk, waving a bottle and calling for any woman who could tolerate him. He staggered from scandal to scandal, reduced to fodder for lurid ' supermarket' tabloid newspapers.

One congressional aide, just 16, told of being propositioned by Kennedy from the back seat of his limousine in Capitol Hill. She testified that he leaned from the window, waved a wine bottle and asked whether she or a friend she was with wanted to join him.

He reeked of drink by nine in the morning and could be relied on to be bawling drunk at four in the afternoon. In Washington's top La Brasserie restaurant, he once threw a waitress over a table in a private room and tried to have sex with her.

His face, once handsome, became as round as a football, bloated and criss-crossed with the broken veins of an out-of-control drinker.

Remarkably, he held on to his political clout and his legislative skills. He won re-election after reelection, dying in office as America's second-longest serving senator.

He was also responsible - or credited by the Left - for an unrivalled body of 'liberal' legislation. He reformed immigration and labour laws, supported 'pro-choice' abortion rights, voted for tougher gun laws and against the Iraq war, and supported gay marriage.

It wasn't long before he became embroiled in another Kennedy family scandal. In 1991, the U.S. was outraged when clan-member William Kennedy Smith was accused of a date rape.

The Kennedy men had gathered at the family's winter beach house in Florida. Smith (Ted's nephew) was accused of taking a young woman, Patricia Bowman, on to the beach late at night and forcing her to have sex against her will.

Smith was found not guilty after building a defence of 'rough', but consensual, sex.
But at the young man's trial, Kennedy was left, once again, with his trousers down. Witnesses testified that he had been lounging in his boxer shorts as Smith coaxed Bowman on to the beach, and did nothing to intervene.

It had been Kennedy who had earlier woken the younger men in his party and insisted that they go out to a nightclub to hunt for women.

After that, Kennedy seemed to seize a final chance to gain a measure of personal control. He offered a mea culpa in which he said he recognised his 'shortcomings, the faults in the conduct of my private life'.

He married a second time, to Washington lawyer Victoria Reggie, who survives him, and said of her: 'She has enriched my life beyond measure.'

At 60, his Kennedy mane still thick but snow white, it finally seemed as if the youngest brother had learned his lesson.

Indeed, it was another tragedy that devastated the family and the nation that partly rehabilitated Kennedy in the public mind: the death in the light aircraft of John Kennedy Jnr, the son of JFK and the heir presumptive to his Camelot.

He was the little boy photographed saluting his father's coffin, and who had become a handsome young man with true potential. America was heartbroken.

Edward Kennedy, for once, rose above his own character defects to preside over the mourning at the funeral.

In his eulogy for John, he said: 'We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb grey hair. But like his father, he had every gift but length of years. He had a legacy and he learned to treasure it. He was part of a legend and he learned to live with it.'

In his own right, Ted Kennedy was a legend, too - but for all the wrong reasons.

Homeschoolers Beat National Average on ACT

Recently, ACT published its results for 2009. On a scale of 1-36 homeschoolers scored an average of 22.5, which beat the national average of 21.1. "This is a remarkable achievement and shows that homeschool parents are successfully preparing their children for college," said Michael Smith, president of HSLDA.

According to ACT officials, research shows that high achievement on the ACT strongly indicates a "greater likelihood of success in college." Success on the ACT test also reveals that the courses taken by high school students to prepare for college have been effective.

A total of 1.48 million students took the ACT in 2009 which included 11,535 homeschoolers or just under 1 percent of the total.

The new ACT results also support the numerous studies which show that homeschoolers are out-performing their public school peers in K-12. The latest study from the National Home Education Research Institute shows that the average homeschooler scores 37 percentile points higher on standardized achievement test than the average public schooled student.

It has always been the position of homeschool advocates that the one-on-one instruction provided by dedicated parents is a more effective way to educate children. It's also much cheaper.

The average public school spends $10,000 per child per year whereas the average homeschooler spends $500 per child per year. Homeschooling is also growing rapidly. The National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Federal Department of Education, estimates that homeschooling is growing at around 7% per year.

Due to the success and growth of the homeschool movement Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews recently concluded that, "Homeschooling is the sleeping giant of the American education system."

To find out more please visit www.hslda.org.

British Study Reveals 'Cruel and Neglectful' Care of One Million NHS Patients

A major report was released today on the abuse and suffering endured by patients under Great Britain's government-run national health service. It is a shocking glimpse of what Obama would impose on all Americans. The more than 100 comments that follow the linked story below shed even more light on a socialized medical system that The One holds up as a model.

One million NHS patients have been the victims of appalling care in hospitals across Britain, according to a major report released today.

From The Telegraph
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor

In the last six years, the Patients Association claims hundreds of thousands have suffered from poor standards of nursing, often with 'neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel' treatment.

The charity has disclosed a horrifying catalogue of elderly people left in pain, in soiled bed clothes, denied adequate food and drink, and suffering from repeatedly cancelled operations, missed diagnoses and dismissive staff.

The Patients Association said the dossier proves that while the scale of the scandal at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust - where up to 1,200 people died through failings in urgent care - was a one off, there are repeated examples they have uncovered of the same appalling standards throughout the NHS.

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Glenn Beck's Fear of Obama: Seize Power Overnight

Rush: 'Most dangerous time in my life for freedom and liberty in this country'

Beck: 'I fear this government, this administration has so much framework already prepared, that they will seize power overnight before anybody even gives it a second thought'

Files Prove Pentagon is Profiling Reporters

From Stars and Stripes


Contrary to the insistence of Pentagon officials this week that they are not rating the work of reporters covering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters’ coverage is being graded as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”

Moreover, the documents — recent confidential profiles of the work of individual reporters prepared by a Pentagon contractor — indicate that the ratings are intended to help Pentagon image-makers manipulate the types of stories that reporters produce while they are embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

This pie chart was extracted from a report by The Rendon Group, evaluating the focus of coverage by a reporter for a major U.S. newspaper. It indicates the firm’s conclusion that the reporter’s coverage was 83.33 percent neutral and 16.67 percent negative in relation to the military’s mission objectives.

One reporter on the staff of one of America’s pre-eminent newspapers is rated in a Pentagon report as “neutral to positive” in his coverage of the U.S. military. Any negative stories he writes “could possibly be neutralized” by feeding him mitigating quotes from military officials.

Another reporter, from a TV station, provides coverage from a “subjective angle,” according to his Pentagon profile. Steering him toward covering “the positive work of a successful operation” could “result in favorable coverage.”

The new revelations of the Pentagon’s attempts to shape war coverage come as senior Defense Department officials are acknowledging increasing concern over recent opinion polls showing declining popular American support for the Afghan war.

“The purpose of this memo is to provide an assessment of [a reporter from a major U.S. newspaper] … in order to gauge the expected sentiment of his work while on an embed mission in Afghanistan,” reads the preamble to one of the reporter profiles prepared for the Pentagon by The Rendon Group, a controversial Washington-based public relations firm.

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