Patrick Alan Coons, January 3, 1954 - January 22, 2014

It has taken awhile for me to post about my brother's death. I received the call January 22, 2014 from Patrick's girlfriend's daughter. Though I knew it was coming, I still was not prepared. Even writing this now months later is very hard for me.  It is impossible to imagine a world without my brother in it. To say that he was larger than life would be an understatement. Pat enjoyed life to the fullest. He had lots of friends and they were loyal to him.  Many of them could not cope with his illness, much as I had such a hard time. Many would cry when they saw him wasting away, much as I did. Oh, how that upset him. He never once complained about his fate, the pain, or the suffering. He never once elicited so much as the slightest sound that made you feel he was thinking about death at all. I think he was ready to go and he lived his life right up to the end. I talked to him the day before he died. He was barely understandable but I could make it out. He told his girlfriend, Lynn, that I was coming to see him. She said he told her that a lot. When he left this earth, he took a part of me with him. And though it comforts me to know he no longer suffers and that he is with so many who have passed before us, I would give anything to see him one more time. His life goes on though. His son, Andrew, and his wife, Val who are expecting their first born, a son, on this very day. I know Pat watches down on them and will always do so. I know how much it meant to him to be reunited with them before he passed. I miss the brother who always made me laugh. I will see him again.

This is the poem I will always think of when I think of Patrick. It has been the same with everyone I have loved and lost.  I am not resigned.



Dirge Without Music
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned

A Primer on Race by Thomas Sowell

Back in the heyday of the British Empire, a man from one of the colonies addressed a London audience.

"Please do not do any more good in my country," he said. "We have suffered too much already from all the good that you have done."

That is essentially the message of an outstanding new book by Jason Riley about blacks in America. Its title is "Please Stop Helping Us." Its theme is that many policies designed to help blacks are in fact harmful, sometimes devastatingly so. These counterproductive policies range from minimum wage laws to "affirmative action" quotas.

This book untangles the controversies, the confusions, and the irresponsible rhetoric in which issues involving minimum wage laws are usually discussed. As someone who has followed minimum wage controversies for decades, I must say that I have never seen the subject explained more clearly or more convincingly.

Black teenage unemployment rates ranging from 20 to 50 percent have been so common over the past 60 years that many people are unaware that this was not true before there were minimum wage laws, or even during years when inflation rendered minimum wage laws ineffective, as in the late 1940s.

Pricing young people out of work deprives them not only of income but also of work experience, which can be even more valuable. Pricing young people out of legal work, when illegal work is always available, is just asking for trouble. So is having large numbers of idle young males hanging out together on the streets.

When it comes to affirmative action, Jason Riley asks the key question: "Do racial preferences work? What is the track record?" Like many other well-meaning and nice-sounding policies, affirmative action cannot survive factual scrutiny.

Some individuals may get jobs they would not get otherwise but many black students who are quite capable of getting a good college education are admitted, under racial quotas, to institutions whose pace alone is enough to make it unlikely that they will graduate.

Studies that show how many artificial failures are created by affirmative action admissions policies are summarized in "Please Stop Helping Us," in language much easier to understand than in the original studies.

There are many ponderous academic studies of blacks, if you have a few months in which to read them, but there is nothing to match Jason Riley's book as a primer that will quickly bring you up to speed on the complicated subject of race in a week, or perhaps over a weekend.

As an experienced journalist, rather than an academic, Riley knows how to use plain English to get to the point. He also has the integrity to give it to you straight, instead of in the jargon and euphemisms too often found in discussions of race. The result is a book that provides more knowledge and insight in a couple of hundred pages than are usually found in books twice that length.

Unlike academics who just tell facts, Riley knows which facts are telling.

For example, in response to claims that blacks don't do well academically because the schools use an approach geared to white students, he points out that blacks from foreign, non-English-speaking countries do better in American schools than black, English-speaking American students.

Asian students do better than whites in schools supposedly geared to whites. In New York City's three academically elite public high schools -- Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech -- there are more than twice as many Asian students as white students in all three institutions.

So much for the theory that non-whites can't do well in schools supposedly geared to whites.

On issue after issue, "Please Stop Helping Us" cites facts to destroy propaganda and puncture inflated rhetoric. It is impossible to do justice to the wide range of racial issues -- from crime to family disintegration -- explored in this book. Pick up a copy and open pages at random to see how the author annihilates nonsense.

His brief comments pack a lot of punch. For example, "having a black man in the Oval Office is less important than having one in the home."

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University

My brother, Pat

My next to the youngest brother, Patrick Alan Coons, was born January 3, 1954 at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri.  He had a bumpy start, needing a whole body transfusion at birth due to ABO incompatibility.  He was the sweetest little brother anyone could have, a laughing baby despite all he had been through. My father was fond of taking pictures of us when we were younger. I recently converted those slides to CDs and gave one to each of my brothers.  Last year, at the age of 58, Patrick was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.  We got together this month in Oklahoma first and then on to Missouri and spent a week together with our brother, Barry, who was also just diagnosed with metastatic cancer to his spine. The picture I have shown here is of Barry, Patrick and me at my daughter, Brandy's, house. Patrick's once strapping 6 foot 7 inch frame has shrunk from the illness. He has finished his radiation therapy and has been told there is nothing else to be done. I am waging war against cancer and I am praying in every way I know how to defeat this disease that has so haunted my family. My mother and father both died of lung cancer. All of my father's brothers and 1 sister died of cancer of some sort, as did his mother and father. I was not ready to see Patrick looking so ill. We live a long ways away from each other and in the past, many years would go by without out keeping touch. There would, after all, be all the time in the world for that. How many times have I thought that in my lifetime and how many times I have been wrong.  So for awhile, I will not be posting about prolife, though it is a cause I am highly devoted to and pray about.  I will not be posting about politics, though again, a cause I am very involved in. For awhile, I will be writing about my brother and my abject and profound love for him, and hoping that anyone reading this will pray for him along with me.  I am just not ready to let him go yet.

I love you Pat. You are my heart.

Vince Gill and Patty Loveless Powerful and Emotional duet at George Jones' funeral, Go Rest High on the Mountain

My mother loved Vince Gill.  I became a fan of his through her and through the years, I came to think of him as not only a great artist with a truly gifted voice, but a great man, a Christian, a good father, a good family man.  I first heard him sing this song on a video with Ricky Skaggs and Patty Loveless.  I am big fans of them, as well.  I learned later that Vince Gill had started writing the song following the death of Keith Whitley and finished the song following the death of his older brother, Bob.  The song went on to win many awards and I have heard many people say that it is a song they have seen played at funerals.  The song is a eulogy, a celebration of life and the final reward of everlasting life. You might want to grab a Kleenex before watching.  Rest in Peace George Jones.  Your life was indeed troubled but you gave so many people joy through your music.  We will remember you.

.

Via the Brenner Brief, Ben Shapiro Discusses his Newest Book "Bullies" at the Heritage Foundation

While the Left likes to pretend that they oppose bullying with all their heart and soul, Ben Shapiro, editor-at-large of Breitbart.com, argues that in reality the Left is the greatest purveyor of bullying in modern American history. Bullying has morphed into the go-to tactic used to quash opponents through fear, threat of force, violence, and rhetorical intimidation on every major issue facing our nation. Whether playing the race card, the class card, or the sexism card, any and every means is invoked to demonize the opposition. By creating a climate of fear, ordinary Americans are forced to abandon their principles, back abhorrent causes, or simply remain silent. In Bullies, Shapiro examines the hypocrisy of the Left and shows that no target is off limits in the campaign to shut down political debate in the name of political correctness. Read the remainder of the article here

 

On Lincoln's Birthday, NAACP Continues Promoting Abortion by Ryan Bomberger - Washington, DC, LifeNews.com

On Lincoln’s Birthday, NAACP Continues Promoting Abortion

by Ryan Bomberger | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 2/12/13 8:07 PM

Today marks the birth of one of the most remarkable individuals in American history. Abraham Lincoln, born into poverty, lived a life of greatness that is too often reduced in its significance in today’s popular culture. The Great Emancipator’s words and actions were the catalyst for millions to be able live out their God-given Purpose, eventually freed from the shackles of slavery and inexplicable human degradation.
Today is also the birthday of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), which formed on this day February 12, 1909.  But unlike Lincoln, whose worldview was shaped by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass (a slave born of rape but a man defined by limitless possibility), the NAACP has allowed itself to be shaped by an ideology that seeks control, conformity, and confusion as it advocates the destruction of beautiful Possibility every day.

Recently, the NAACP has threatened to sue LifeNews, me and the organization I co-founded, The Radiance Foundation. In numerous writing for news and blog websites, including my own, we’ve merely described the “civil rights” group for what it is—a pro-abortion advocate. More specifically, the NAACP has threatened to sue us for “trademark infringement” because we dared to call them the “National Association for the Abortion of Colored People.”

That’s exactly who they’ve shown themselves to be.

The NAACP has proudly proclaimed it’s pro-abortion position since 2004, where they passed a resolution undeniably declaring their ironic support of abortion. In their document “Health Policies and Resolutions: 1992-2003” they oddly refer to the NARAL/Planned Parenthood “March Against Fear” (later renamed the “March for Women’s Lives”) as the March for Life. On page 41, they claim: “More than eight decades ago, the NAACP’s most distinguished founder, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois understood that making birth control available to poor women helped them gain control over their lives.”
Abortion is control—population control. And today, the black population in America has only experienced more poverty, exponentially higher STDs, increasing “unintended pregnancies”, epidemic fatherlessness (72.3%), and abortions of 40% of black pregnancies nationwide. As we reveal in our TooManyAborted.com campaigns, black babies are aborted up to 6 times the rate of the majority population such as in NYC where more black babies are aborted than are born alive. DuBois considered these lives “unfit” as he aligned himself with the Negro Project and Margaret Sanger, who was not on a benevolent crusade to rescue the black community from poverty.
Dr. DuBois wrote some of the most repugnant remarks about poorer blacks in Sanger’s Birth Control Review. He wrote in a 1932 article entitled: “Black Folks and Birth Control” (h/t Life Dynamics) that: “…the mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase among whites, is from that part of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly. They must learn that among human races and groups, as among vegetables, quality and not mere quantity, really counts.”
There’s nothing quite like comparing the lives of human beings with produce. This detachment with reality continues to run in the NAACP’s veins.
The organization regularly engages in historical revision. It’s no wonder they fail to mention that they angrily parted ways with W.E.B. DuBois, in 1934, because of his duplicitous radical ideology. At times a man of tremendous insight and inspiration, DuBois’ positions on issues were in direct conflict with the NAACP, especially his advocacy of segregation. Praising murderous regimes like the Soviet Union and China, he became a communist, renounced his American citizenship, praised Stalin (who murdered millions in his Purges) in his unretracted infamous obituary, and became a citizen of Ghana in 1961. He died two years later.

Please read the rest of the article here

Birmingham Abortion Facility Again Denied Liense to Reopen

Birmingham abortion facility again denied license to reopen

by Operation Rescue staff

Fri Feb 15 12:09 PM EST

BIRMINGHAM, February 15, 2013, (Operation Rescue) – Efforts to license and reopen the New Woman All Women abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, which was closed for numerous health and safety violations last year after pro-life groups reported it to the authorities, have been denied for the second time.

Allison Aranda of Life Legal Defense Foundation, informed Operation Rescue, CEC for Life, and other pro-life groups this week that an application for clinic licensure submitted by Kelly Rain-Water was denied by the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) after Rain-Water missed a January deadline for submission of additional documents.

The abortion clinic was forced to close after pro-life activists documented two abortion patients being hand-carried by emergency workers down broken back steps to gurneys waiting in a trash-strewn alley on January 21, 2012, and filed complaints with the ADPH. An inspection by health authorities uncovered 76 pages of violations. They also learned that an additional woman was hospitalized the same day.

Read the rest of the article at LifeSiteNews.com here 

Steve Jobs: "I'm Glad I Didn't End up as an Abortion."

Steve Jobs: ‘I’m glad I didn’t end up as an abortion’

by John Jalsevac

Thu Nov 24 6:27 PM EST

November 24, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Since Steve Jobs’ death in October, numerous pro-life commentators have linked the fact that Jobs was adopted to the issue of abortion – pointing out how different the world would be if Jobs’ birth mother had simply chosen to abort her unwanted pregnancy.
But it turns out that pro-life groups weren’t the only ones to make the connection: Jobs himself did.

In the new authoritative biography of Jobs, biographer Walter Isaacson reveals how Jobs set out to find his birth mother in the early 80s, even hiring a private detective for the task.
While his first efforts to find his mother failed, Jobs persisted, particularly after his adoptive mother passed away in the mid 80s.
Jobs explained to Isaacson why he was so determined to find his biological mother:
“I wanted to meet [her] mostly to see if she was OK and to thank her, because I’m glad I didn’t end up as an abortion,” he said. “She was 23 and she went through a lot to have me.”

Read the rest of the article here

Senator Marco Rubio Responds to Obama's State of the Union Address

Voter Fraud In Ohio - Democrat Melowese Richardson admits ON CAMERA that she voted twice

If anyone wonders why a typically Red State went Blue this last election, this is only one of several investigations throughout the state of voter fraud. The woman in this video, Melowese Richardson, was surprised by Channel 9's reporter outside her home with the allegations against her and members of her family as well as members of her apartment building, all of whom voted twice. Perhaps even more shocking than her admission was that she was absolutely defiant and unrepentant, stating that she voted for Obama's right to be president. Yes, voter fraud, the gift that keeps on giving. Deeply disturbing. Melowese also WORKS at the polls.  watch the video for more on the story and read here here

Pediatric Neurosurgeon, Dr. Benjamin Carson, Makes a Powerful Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast

From The Blaze, Pediatric Neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson, world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, gives a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast that takes to task many of the things going on in Washington right now, including the debt, political correctness, taxation, and healthcare. President Obama sits stone-faced through much of the speech. I applaud the courage, frankness and spirit of this fine doctor. He spoke about the Carson Scholars Fund, a fund he has set up to help students advance academically. More can be read here

Dr. Carson received the Medal of Freedom Aware in 2008 from President George W. Bush.

Abortion, 40 Years is Long Enough

From the website Abort73.com this powerful video regarding the 40th anniversary of Roe vs Wade.

The Abortionist Saints of Sundance by L. Brent Bozell III

Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival featured a documentary celebrating four "amazing" abortionists who evacuate wombs in the third trimester of pregnancy. The critics in attendance loved it. The Philadelphia Inquirer boasted it drew "two standing ovations — one for the doctors."

Sundance attendees in Utah were greeted by police and armed sheriffs in green jumpsuits that made a show of force outside the theater. They had to have their bags searched and were inspected with handheld metal detectors. After the movie was shown, two police officers stood at the front of the auditorium as the directors and the four abortionists featured in the film answered audience questions.

The message was clear: pro-lifers are dangerous.

The film's name is "After Tiller," as in the late-term abortionist George Tiller, shot to death in 2009 inside his Lutheran church on a Sunday in Kansas. The filmmakers are two deluded women in their 20s, Martha Shane and Lana Wilson. They claim this film is non-political, that it's calm in tone.

"Our agenda is not political but humanist," they declared in a statement. "The nation's shouting match over abortion has become increasingly distanced from the real-life situations and decisions faced by those people most intimately involved," and so they aspired to "shed more light rather than more heat" on the issue.

"Those people most intimately involved" in an abortion are the ones aborted. For them, there is no shouting match. They have no voice.

As for the film's tone, consider this quote: "We're 40 years after Roe v. Wade, and the women in America are in worse shape than they were 40 years ago. Their rights are being trampled in the street." This quote came from abortionist and activist LeRoy Carhart in the film. This was the line singled out by Marlow Stern as he began his promotional article for the Daily Beast.

A trailer for the documentary shows there's more venom where that came from. After "After Tiller" was shot, Carhart said, "there were no other thoughts in my mind but to carry out the mission." But in Kansas, said Carhart, "The Republican Party said I was an abomination and should be driven from the state."

He demonized the pro-life movement: "You don't give in to terrorists because it only gets worse."

Please read the remainder of the article at CNS News.com here 

The video for After Tiller can be viewed here

On the website Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, they write of this documentary:

A documentary about those who perform late-term abortions, “After Tiller,” previewed at the Sundance Film Festival this week. The directors of the movie, Lana Wilson and Martha Shane, were interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! about their film. Bill Donohue found much of what they said revealing [click here to read it]:

George Tiller was the most maniacal child killer in U.S. history, and it is testimony to his deeds (he was the king of partial-birth abortion) that there are only four “doctors” left in the entire nation who are able to do what he did for a living (three of whom worked with him). “After Tiller” is their story. But it is also our story: these people unwittingly validate the pro-life position.

Goodman discusses how these abortionists are faced with “dilemmas” and “agonizing” decisions. Dr. Shelley Sella uses the term “baby” to speak of the unborn children she readily discards, and director Shane mentions how these women go on “grieving the loss of their child.” Best of all is Dr. Susan Robinson who recounts what she tells her patients:

“Look, of course you don’t want an abortion. Nobody wants an abortion. You have three choices: You can have a kid that you say you can’t take good care of; you can have a kid and give it to somebody else, who you know or don’t know; or you can have an abortion, which you think is the wrong thing to do. Those are your three choices. They all suck.”

The remainder of the article can be read here
 

FREE MICHAEL BEHENNA! An American Soldier Unjustly Accused

LETTERS TO MICHAEL
 Letters from you are the only real way to convey to Michael that we care and are fighting on his behalf to right this injustice. He has no access to the Internet so he will not see the comments posted on this web site and he can not receive email. Thank you for taking the time to let Michael know that you appreciate him putting his life on the line in Iraq for our freedom and that you are now fighting for him!

We often get questions about what should one say to Michael in your letters.  The short answer is just tell him that you support him and appreciate his military service.  Beyond that share whatever you feel like sharing.  Michael likes to learn about the places that his supporters live so consider including a picture of your town or state in your letter.

Also, we often are asked if Michael can receive books.  He can, but these must be sent directly from the bookseller or distributor (ex: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.)
Michael can also receive money into his prison account for personal items and telephone calls. the prison charges 40 cents per minute for telephone calls, which makes keeping in touch difficult. Only Money Orders can be sent to the prison and they must have “Michael Behenna  87503″ on the payee line.
Send books, money orders and your letters of support to:

Michael Behenna #87503
1300 N. Warehouse Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304

Sign the petition to free Michael Behenna here

A letter from Michael here

A Cause Worth fighting for, Michael's story here

Get involved, walk the walk!  Stand up for our military heroes.  Write your congressmen and senators.  FREE MICHAEL BEHENNA! 

Mark Mattioli, Father of Newtown Shooting Victim, Speaks About Gun Laws

Parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School appeared before a subcommittee of the Connecticut Legislature on Monday to speak about gun control. While some used the platform to promote stricter firearms legislation, at least one parent became passionate, claiming that there are more than enough laws on the books, that current regulations simply need to be enforced and that the nation needs to embrace personal responsibility.

Mark Mattioli, whose six-year-old son James perished inside of the school, testified that a plethora of new gun laws isn’t the answer and that, instead, personal responsibility, accountability and civility are the best path forward. He made his comments as intense debate surrounding gun control and the causal factors behind the shooting continue to be at the forefront of public discussion.

The grieving father, who ended up receiving a standing ovation, said that he believes in “simple, few gun laws” and that there are already “more than enough on the books.” Mattioli contends that “the problem is not gun laws” and that these regulations simply need to be enforced.

“How do we expect to have any impact on a society and say, ‘We’re going to pass a law. Hey this is inexcusable. We can’t allow any more of this. Let’s pass a law that will change the course of the future’  when we don’t enforce the laws that we have on the books — the most important laws?,” he asked.  For more on this story, read here

One-Third of a Generation Gone in 40 Years

January 22, 2013 marked the 40th anniversary of perhaps the most egregious death sentence ever handed over by any court in history. The sentence is even more horrible because it was unborn children being rendered disposable. This week's Right to Life march in Washington DC on the steps of the Supreme Court was attended by hundreds of thousands of Americans standing up for the rights of the unborn. A record number of young people attended this march, standing in testimony to those who for 40 years have had no voice outside those who believe life begins at conception.  Doug Patton from The Cagle Post wrote an article about the anniversary of Roe vs Wade entitled "One-Third of a Generation Gone in 40 Years" which brings home saliently the stark number of a generation lost to abortion. In the article, he writes:

A little more than a month ago, 20 innocent children were savagely and senselessly slaughtered in their classroom at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, a fact now being used by an opportunistic president to further his agenda. That same day, 150 times that many innocent children were savagely and senselessly slaughtered in America’s abortion mills.

The next day, the same thing happened. And the day after that. And the day after that.

It’s been going on for 40 years now.

On January 22, 1973, my wife had been carrying the first of our two sons for three months when seven men in black robes handed down the most notorious Supreme Court ruling since Dred Scott. Consequently, our sons have grown to manhood in a country that has never protected its innocent unborn children. They have come of age with the knowledge that it is a crime to kill certain “endangered species” of animals, while realizing that one-third of their generation has been legally aborted before having the opportunity to draw breath.

America’s callous attitude toward the unborn is due in part to the overwhelming quantity of tiny corpses, now in the neighborhood of 50 million. For the last 40 years, they have been poked, poisoned and pulverized to death in the name of “choice.” As Soviet butcher Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said, “The death of a hundred people is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” This is so because, as human beings, we cannot wrap our minds around the enormity of the evil involved in such numbers. 

Killing the innocent is wrong. We all know this intuitively. The events of September 11, 2001, are seared into our consciousness because of the heinous nature of the crimes and the horrendous loss of life. Yet we turn a blind eye to the methodical and deliberate killing of that many human beings every single day at the hands of “doctors.”
 

 The rest of the article can be read here

The Mainstream Media, not surprisingly, failed to cover this event. Still, each day, all across the United States, in all kinds of weather, every day of the week, Americans will stand as witness outside abortion clinics, most prominently Planned Parenthood, and bear witness for life. Like those who marched in Washington, DC, we who stand for life will let nothing stop us. We are a growing army.  Silent no more.

FBI DIRECTOR: I have to check to see if Obama has the right to kill Americans

It was predicted.  And now it is openly being talked about.  So it begins....

A Life Worth Loving, When I'm Gone, From Disney's Movie Up Combined with Rory & Joey's, When I'm Gone

I thought this was so beautiful. I will never spend a lifetime with a man I grew up with, much less one I grew old with. It did make me think of my mother and father and how devoted they were to each other.  I miss them very much.  This is a song of celebration of life, but it's a very emotional song, too. Here's to all of those who have spent their lives with their best friend and the person they loved more than anyone else.  God bless you.

January 22, 2013, the 40th Anniversary of Roe vs Wade, and a Video by Pro-Abortionists to Celebrate

January 22, 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of Roe vs Wade and what better way to celebrate than by making a tasteless and disturbing video to mark the occasion. Shameful, sinful, and nearly unforgivable. 40 years and nearly 55 million deaths later, are we better off as humans that this bill was passed by the Supreme Court, made into law, as a "right."  A right to end the life of the most defenseless of humans. I say we are not and it is no occasion to celebrate, but to mourn. 

Charlton Heston's Stirring Speech at NRA Convention in 2000

There was never any doubt that he was an accomplished actor.  He was also a wonderful and inspiring president for the NRA. Listening to this speech, I heard an echo of Ronald Reagan, the beautiful, meaningful wording of a great American, a great patriot, a believer in the Constitution and in liberty. Thank you, Mr. Heston, for never forgetting our civil liberties and defending the Constitution. 

The Selling Out of Al Gore

I received the following article in my e-mail from the Media Research Center . The article, written by L. Brent Bozell III has to deal with the perfidy of a fallen Al Gore. I found his letter the best I have read regarding the hollow man, the empty chair that Al Gore has been exposed as. I am not sure he ever was the man he said he was. Now an Oscar winner for a mockumentary, much as Michael Moore, and an undeserving Nobel Peace Prize winner, much as Barak Obama, both of these institutions should now be totally ashamed and rethinking their giving out of these "prestigious" awards. The letter is as follows:

The liberal media have spent 12 years feeling sorry for Al Gore.The Man Who Should Have Won in 2000 has had megatons of positive publicity dumped on him, hailing him as the “Goracle.” They cheered as leftists honored him with the Nobel Peace Prize and gave an Oscar to his filmed eco-sermon “An Inconvenient Truth.”

So when Gore sold his left-wing cable channel Current TV to Al-Jazeera for $500 million, where were they? Despite the fact that conservatives thought the deal sounded like a ridiculous April Fools joke, the networks had nearly nothing to say. ABC skipped it entirely. CBS and NBC offered a perfunctory sentence on a couple of newscasts.

These networks might argue this was not an Earth-shattering business event given the puny size of Current’s audience, which is true.

At about 42,000 viewers in prime time, the nationwide audience could fit inside the Washington Redskins’ Fedex Field, and still leave the stadium half-empty.

It’s about one-fiftieth of the audience TLC gets with “Honey Boo Boo.” Of about 96 cable channels that are publicly rated by Nielsen, 93 of them have higher ratings than Current. It is a Nothing Network.

But the controversy is not about ratings. It’s about one network selling itself to another best known for vicious anti-American propaganda. Al-Jazeera is not buying Current for the potential profits. Surely, they’ll shut the old channel down. They want the cable slots to push their poison in American homes.

In 2006, CNN’s Frank Sesno interviewed Al-Jazeera talk show host Riz Khan and asked if the terrorist group Hamas should be designated as a terrorist organization. “I’m not one to judge,” Khan replied. What about Hezbollah? Khan answered: “Same thing, you know, I'm not going to judge.”

There are other signs of disturbing pro-Islamist bias. In the midst of the “Arab Spring” celebrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on February 11, 2011, some 200 men sexually assaulted CBS correspondent Lara Logan.

Al-Jazeera English, which was credited by Hillary Clinton and other liberals for its ubiquitous coverage of the uprising, deliberately ignored the assault on Logan.

When they were called out by Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, Al-Jazeera English publicist responded that the network “believes as a general rule” that journalists “are not the story.”

Capehart then noted that just days before, al-Jazeera touted a story on how “Domestic and foreign journalists have come under siege amid the turmoil in Egypt.”

Then there’s the case of honoring Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar. In 1979, Kuntar was imprisoned for shooting an Israeli civilian in front of the Israeli’s four-year-old daughter and then bashing in the little girl’s head with his rifle.

In 2008, Al-Jazeera in Qatar threw a televised birthday party for Kuntar, then newly released in a prisoner exchange. An Al-Jazeera interviewer told Kuntar, “You deserve even more than this,” then brought out cake and sparklers.

The cake had pictures on it, and Kuntar declared the “most beautiful picture” on the cake was of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. “There cannot be anything more beautiful,” he proclaimed.

Al Gore could see nothing but positive qualities in his buyer, putting out a shameless statement that claimed, “Al-Jazeera, like Current, believes that facts and truth lead to a better understanding of the world around us.”

Gore rebuffed an offer from conservative radio/TV personality Glenn Beck to buy Current TV. Beck was told, “The legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.”

Beck is not aligned with the Gore viewpoint, and yet Al-Jazeera is? Al Gore, too, would celebrate a child-murdering terrorist with a birthday cake? Why isn’t this alignment controversial or newsworthy?

Then the story gets worse. While Beck told his listeners he was rejected within minutes, Gore became a lobbyist for Al-Jazeera.

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter revealed that to preserve the deal and his big payout, Gore went to some of cable distributors looking for an excuse to drop the low-rated channel, “and reminded them that their contracts with Current TV called it a news channel.

Were the distributors going to say that an American version of Al Jazeera didn't qualify, possibly invoking ugly stereotypes of the Middle Eastern news giant?”

So dropping Al-Jazeera became anti-“news,” anti-Arab, and Islamophobic.

But the networks won’t breathe a word about Beck, and never allowed a conservative or a critic of radical Islam to offer any criticism of either Al Gore the super-rich sellout, or his terror-enabling buyer. None dares express horror that the man who was almost president on 9/11 was allying himself with Al-Qaeda’s video jukebox.

 

A woman born alive from abortion speaks about Barak Obama's dismal disregard for human life

Publix Mother's Day Ad, A Celebration of Life

Happy Birthday Mom, Gone But Not Forgotten

My mother passed from this earth to her eternal life and salvation on June 7, 2007. The last time I talked to her was Mother's Day of 2007. I had sent her some summer gowns to wear. I was worried because she didn't really like sleeveless gowns, and when I had not heard from her by the afternoon, I called to make sure she had gotten them and liked them. We had a good conversation. It had been increasingly difficult to get in touch with my mother in the last several years of her life as my brother had taken to moving her about from place to place, something none of my other brothers and I approved of, but we had not idea the extent he had taken from her until after all was said and done. The old saying about knowing what you had until it was gone is so very true. The fact is, I loved my mother with all my heart, but ours was a somewhat adversarial relationship, mostly on my part. I felt I had never pleased either of my parents and despite all of my hard work, that I never would. Also, there was the fact that my mother favored my youngest brother over the rest of us. Despite what she said, actions, as they say, speak louder than words. I had 4 brothers and 3 of them knew where they stood with mom. I was looking at some old slides last night and it hit me very poignantly that we had some great Christmases and it was all mom's doing. Dad just wasn't into Christmas. He watched from a distance and smiled, but I knew even at a young age that he had no real interest in it. It was years after my father's death before I knew that my father had never bought my mother a gift of any kind for any occasion. I never knew that as a child. Or even a teenager. Or even an adult. How had I missed that? My mother was 300% committed to my father. I never heard them argue in front of me. None of us did. I never knew of them to talk about finances in front of us. I never knew of them to be ununited on ANYTHING in front of us. It was the kind of marriage I wanted for myself, but never had. They don't make marriages like that anymore, at least not many. So mom, as you watch from above, this is for you.

In this picture from probably the 1940s, mom is the one one the left. She is with her sisters, Ola in the middle, and Louise on the right. My Aunt Louise died last year and she was the end of the sisters, but were they not beautiful? I think women back then were much prettier and more feminine than women today. I think it would be good to go back to those times, when life was simpler and sweeter. But wasn't my mom a Betty! Seriously, she had the most beautiful ice-blue eyes and the nicest legs. Gee I wish I had told her that when she was alive. Happy Mother's Day, mom. You deserved so much more than you got. But I can say, I never failed to send you a card in all my life, or to call, or send you a gift. I will always love you.

Glenn Beck Exposes Obama, Liar in Chief

I sometimes wonder if there is anything about Obama that is true. Surely, his TWO autobiographies are filled with "facts" that simply are not true. He even goes so far as to slur his grandmother, who so lovingly raised him, as a "typical white person" who fears blacks. At this point, I am not sure why any "typical white person" would vote for him, simply for that remark, or how any black person could vote for him, given his undying support for Planned Parenthood and their racial cleansing agenda, no matter that he states they do mammograms, which they simply do not and never have, though I see them getting the equipment in the near future as a facade for their racing cleansing agenda. Enjoy as Glenn Beck exposes only some of the lies Obama has told. When someone lies so easily, can more sinister things be far from the surface. I think no.