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“I’m from the government and I’m here to help you”. Didn’t Ronald Reagan’s joke about that? Now State Senator Ken Pruitt is quoted in the Stuart News, 1-28-06, “I am the Chairman of the Rules Committee and Senate President Designate, so I have a lot of influence over what bills are voted on”.

Senator Pruitt wrote that in a letter asking for money, not for his personal use, but to keep the Pledge of Allegiance in schools. He’s worried about “liberal judges, the radical ACLU and the anti-God left”.

Senator Pruitt apparently wanted “to use an emotional issue to rally more general support from conservative Republicans...” . Wasn’t the only time Jesus got mad, when he saw people making money off of religion on the temple steps?

Didn’t he also say, if you want to pray to your God, go alone into your house, lock the door, go into a back room and close it up, so no one can hear.

I can’t imagine him waving the flag, demanding constant salutations, and indoctrinating children. That was Hitler’s method. Jesus invited people to dinner. His first miracle supplied more wine, to keep a party going. And what was that parable about a camel and the eye of a needle?

Thank you.

“Judge Alito should not have been subjected to humiliation”, (Stuart News, Your View, 1-22-06) But a 10-year old child subjected to a strip search was OK with Judge Alito. Only the child’s father and his house were named in the search warrant, if I heard correctly on C-Span. That’s the strict interpretation of the law.

But his child and her mother were taken upstairs and strip searched in a bedroom? If that is true, then Judge Alito seemed to rule that a wife and child are like property of the husband and father. That’s an “activist” judge.

“Mrs. Alito...couldn’t hold her emotions in check while (her husband) was being attacked so viciously”, Vince Pasquale continues. As a mother, maybe she cried because she was imagining her daughter being told to take off all her clothes, Was “bend over and spread ‘em”, included, and submission to a stranger’s gloved finger in vagina and anus?

Judge Alito explained that it was important to search children, or drug dealers would always hide their wares on children? Is that true? Another “Solution” to the Drug Problem? On top of “no-knock” and arresting women who grow their own marijuana for painful medical conditions.

Meanwhile, 6th-graders are into inhalants. Vicodan, Meth, etc. seem to be commonly available for a price. The War on Drugs seems to be as “insurgent-creating” as the War on Iraq. Judge Alito may have “intellect” but where’s the Common Sense? And compassion for children?

Florida is rolling in dough, is that what Governor Jeb Bush said in the Stuart news?

Spend $565 million for hurricane preparedness, he says? Does that include the hard stuff of putting power lines underground and protecting substations? Or just the fluff stuff like booklets and PR?

On the Stuart News Commentary page, the founder of FL Sportsman Magazine seems to be saying that buying just 58,000 acres of Big Sugarland for a flowway, would help eliminate the discharge horrors of Lake O. And create a place for storm
water to go?

We sure hope that's on the Guv's list, too.

So it’s treason to expose the NSA’s wiretapping? If the NSA report, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S” had been leaked, perhaps 9-11 could have been prevented.

Re the Abramoff scandal:

Tucker Carlson said “Eliminate earmarks” . George Will concurs in his Jan.15,06 column He quotes Jeff Flake, R, AZ, telling the House leadership: “The # and value of earmarks has more than quadrupled over the past 10 years”(I’m paraphrasing). Over 2000+ earmarks in the Transportation bill alone.

“End the use of continuing resolutions”, is 2nd on George Will’s list. "If Congress had to get its work done on time,... it would. " Chris Matthews said to end middle-of-the-night-sessions. Congress’ own rules must also allow our representatives time to read the bills they’re voting on.

3rd from George Will: “Forbid appropriations to private entities. Government money should flow directly to government agencies, federal, state or local. And those agencies should be required to formally testify that local projects receiving national funding serve essential national needs.” Amen

Cleaning up FL’s rivers and restoring the Everglades meets this criteria. And where’s the leadership to re-evaluate the whole levee/transportation/marsh system on the Mississippi?

Congress can’t just complain about too powerful a president, it has to think nationally too. And George Will hits the nail on the head: “...many Americans unblushingly enjoy in practice what they deplore in principle-Washington’s expensive refusal to limit itself to proper federal business.”

USA TODAY, THUR JAN.12 2006, BY DONNA LEINWAND
("Drug, terror rings find new ways to launder money")

Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey " said it's unclear how much money in the USA is made from criminal enterprises. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates sales of illicit drug revenue in the USA, Canada and Mexico to be $142,000,000,000.00 a year.

"The key to ending drug trafficking is to wipe out the money side, Drug Enforcement Administration chief Karen Tandy said. The DEA seized $2 Billion in '05, up from $500 million in '03.

If we legalize marijuana, how much tax money would we collect? How many people would not go on to addictive drugs,
if marijuana was available to adults only? How long's this drug war been going on? FDR was smart enough to let
Americans from European stock have their beer and/or wine. Even Cold beer is available; has that increased DUI's
and deaths from such? But Marijuana is VERBOTEN? Where's this American Ingenuity we always brag about?

Letters to the Editor:

Obviously the Pledge doesn’t work, if we keep asserting Democracy, Democracy. Imposing a Republic on Iraq with a Senate like ours, would give the minorities power. Look at what one senator from Alaska can do.

1892 was when 2 guys dreamed up the Pledge. Weren’t men of African descent lynched on average of once a day back then? And others who stood up for “liberty and justice for all” were attacked in other ways.

Women didn’t get the vote till 1917.

The “under God” part was added in the 50’s, to differentiate us from the “godless” Commies. Now we’re building our own “Berlin Wall”. Someone throwing rocks was shot dead there recently.

And a permanent prison is going up on land that we declared ours, in Cuba. To store all the “terrorists” that we don’t want fighting against us. How is that not like a “gulag” for “dissidents” ?

During the War on Vietnam, when children were embedded with napalm and we dropped more bombs than in W.W.II, I thought it hypocritical to lead my students in the Pledge. I was told I had to do it, and of course I didn’t want to lose my job.

Now here we go again, with “new and improved” napalm. All we can do is refuse to accept such actions, someone said. In a “free” country, not standing for, or saying the Pledge is a non-violent method of dissent. It was scary to read the angry letters against that high school student. This is a “free” country?

"Eliminate earmarks" , said Tucker Carlson on "Hardball" last night. More and stricter rules about lobbying won't work.

There were over 2000 earmarks in the Transportation Bill: was the bridge to nowhere just one of them?
This guy Blunt going for the leadership is a big believer in earmarks. The other guy, whose name also
starts with a "B", is one of maybe 6 Republican congresspeople who didn't put an earmark in.

2 good sites about who dropped the dime on Abramoff: http://rawstory.com/news/2005/How_Jack_Abramoff_and_Michael_Scanlon_0103.html

http://www.wonkette.com/politics/abramoffukkah/index.php#bang-the-manicurist-slowly-146280

An international search engine: http://www.ixquick.com/

I didn't know Thomas Paine wrote the 1st draft for the Declaration of Independence, or that he went to France
and wrote "The Rights of Man" , parts 1 and 2. King Louis gave him lots of aid for the "United States of America".
He was the first to call us that? George Washington had his "Common Sense" read aloud to the discouraged
and disheartened troops. I'll have to check this all out. There's so much history to be made known.
http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/thomaspaine.htm

George Washington used laudamun every day for the pain in his mouth, I swear I heard a historian say on C_Span.
He also grew hemp. Isn't it time to reguate marijuana use, at least? Thank you

Fl is rolling in dough, is that what the Guv said in the Stuart news? Spend $565 million for hurricane preparedness, he says? Is putting power lines underground and protecting substations on his list?

On the Commentary page, the founder of FL Sportsman Magazine seems to say that buying just 58,000 acres of Big Sugarland for a flowway, would help eliminate the discharge horrors of Lake O. Is that on the list?

Please give us more info, and ask Jeb some more quesions. Thank you.

"The folks who will reap the benefits out there need to go ahead and cough up the dollars",  FL State Senator Ken Pruitt is quoted in the Stuart News today.

Him and Jeb are O.K with $19 million to study widening the Beeline Highway, but that's it?

But they gave $369 million to Scripps? We've only been FL residents since April, so we're wondering what this Scripps is, that the government will pay its operating costs for 7 years?

Ike recognized the value of  good roads, but these Neo-Republicans tell us to pay for own roads, even as they hand our tax & fee monies to Scripps?

Research for new drugs is more important? Even as we ignore all the positive research on marijuana, a natural plant created presumably by that Intelligent Designer we hear so much about? Even hemp, which George Washington grew as another most useful plant, is outlawed. Instead, paper is made by pulp mills that pump waste into our waterways.

The Stuart News 1-4-06, 3 tiny articles in “Business”

Cross Lander USA doesn’t have to put airbags in its off-the road vehicles, because it might cause them “substantial economic hardship”?

What did we buy? $805 million for “information systems engineering and information technology support” for the Army. How does this help the troops? Explain, please.

United’s coming out of a 3-year bankruptcy, and job 1 is to give “400 top managers 11% of the new stock in the reorganized company”.
What about the other employees?

Free country? Summarizing Maureen Dowd in her recent column about Cheney:
Halliburton prepared a 500-page document on what to do with Iraq’s oil industry, several months before the invasion. The Pentagon has kept it secret, and Jeff Gerth has been trying unsuccessfully to get it for 2 years

New international search tool: www.Ixquick.com from Bob Schwabach’s column. Thanks

http://www.wonkette.com/politics/abramoffukkah/index.php#bang-the-manicurist-slowly-146280
Ana Marie Cox has also written a book, "Dog Days"

Letter to the editor of the Stuart News, published by them in shorter form;

Mr. Tonnello  wants to know why FDR wasn't impeached for selling 50
destroyers to England w/o telling Congress.  Probably because it created
jobs in many of their districts, and profits for many businesses.

No one asks why Harry Truman stopped George Patton from getting to Berlin
before the Russians?  Maybe Harry was thinking of saving American lives.
(75,000 Russians died) The Battle  of the Bulge seems to have happened
because our brass thought the Nazi's were finished.   Who knew what they
would do to save their capital?

We still have a Korea problem because MacArthur  invaded China, disobeying
his Commander-in-Chief.   Harry Truman had been in the trenches in WWI, and
saw men die.  Maybe, like Lincoln, he knew civilian control of the military
is in our Constitution for a reason.

Bill Clinton did not ignore 5 attacks by terrorists.  He depended on our 17
Intelligence services and FBI.   But were they all too busy fighting each
other for "turf" and funding? I remember reading that the CIA brought the
blind cleric into our country to rile up the Muslims here about the Holy War

against the Soviets.    He's now in jail for the 1st World Trade Center
bombing.

George Crile's book, "Charlie Wilson's War", tells how our CIA armed and
trained 300,000 mujahideen during the Reagan/Bush years.  Ben Casey seems to
have thought getting them to expand opium production would hook the Soviet
troops, and bring in more money to supplement our $2 Billion and the Saudi's
matching funds.

And you're wondering how the Holy Warriors now can have so much firepower? 
The CIA was careful to have go-betweens buy globally, so it couldn't be
traced back to US.  Like Ollie's deal  selling missiles to the Ayatollah
that were made in Israel.

France was in our most important war, big time.  Read
http://www.pbs.org/ktca/liberty/chronicle_yorktown1781.html, about the
"miraculous convergence" that kept King George from aborting us.  So the kid

grew up to save the "old" man?   Our nation would never have been born
without them.

Only experts in terrorism can find fault with George Bush?  So those of us
who think of the Americans dead and maimed, and the Iraqi people "shocked
and awed" by our "smart" bombs, are supposed to hail him as our chief?

Ted Kennedy will have to answer to his God for what he did, as will whoever
fired the police chief, if that is true.   He has input on the Supreme court

choice, because he is a Senator.  It doesn't bother Mr. Tonello that Judge
Alito thought strip-searching a 10-year girl was O.K, and perfectly legal?

We're all Americans.  We trade with the same Communist China that killed us
in Korea, invaded and took over Tibet, and that ran over their own people
with tanks.   We don't want us to give up in Iraq or Israel, but how about
changing our methods of madness.