The Bill Kumpe Blog

Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens ...

2008-11-04T22:14:00.002-06:00

Remember, O Lord, what has happened to us; look, and see our disgrace. Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens ...

Lamentations 5:1,2

Preview My New Private Blog

2008-10-09T13:14:00.003-05:00

It will take a few days for me to get the permission list together for my new private blog. In the meanwhile, anyone can preview that blog at: http://bkumpe.blogspot.com .

For permanent permission to view this new blog please e-mail me at: bill@billkumpelawfirm.com . This link may or not work directly from this blog entry and you may have to cut and paste it into your own e-mail software.

Please include your real name and a valid e-mail address. I intend to allow confidential posting to the blog and nothing short of a court order could make me reveal the identities of those who choose to post confidentially. But, I do ask that at least I know who everybody is and how they can be contacted if necessary.

I look forward to visiting with you.

Bill Kumpe

BNN - How To Kill A Blog

2008-10-08T08:56:00.003-05:00

There is a Gresham's law of sorts in all public and private relationships. Just as bad money drives good money from the market, bad bloggers can drive good bloggers from the marketplace of ideas. There are situations that people with responsibilities simply cannot tolerate.

As I have previously posted, I asked David Mastio, Chief Executive Officer of Blog Net News, to remove my blog from his online publication Blog Net News Oklahoma. I asked him to remove it because I do not find Blog Net News Oklahoma an appropriate venue for my work. Further, I do not care to be publicly or privately associated with some BNN contributors or their statements.

Mr. Mastio replied that he would hide behind the fair use doctrine and continue to use my name and blog entries without my permission.

Fair enough Mr. Mastio. Commencing with this post, I will no longer add new content to The Bill Kumpe Blog. I will continue blogging on a private blog. Access will be restricted to 100 selected readers of my choice. Those of you from BNN who are regular readers can contact me at bill@billkumpelawfirm.com for further information about access. Based upon my daily hit rate there will not be enough subscriptions to go around. Priorities will go first to my clients and allied attorneys, second to other scholars and researchers with whom I maintain a regular correspondent relationship and third to fellow bloggers of my choice.

I used to be a professional journalist. Other newspapers in the region regularly "picked up" my copy and reprinted it in their own papers. It was an honor to have those editors recognize my work in that manner. Those editors were friends and professional colleagues. I never had to worry that my copy would be published next to information that I (or now my clients) would find distasteful or embarrasing. That is not the case at BNN.

So, I am reluctantly "pulling the plug" on my public blog to prevent further unauthorized use of my work. While I do not agree with everything that British author Andrew Keen has to say about the new internet culture, I reluctantly have to agree that this situation is living proof of his assertion that "the cult of the amateur" is indeed "killing our culture," coarsening public discourse and eroding the intelligence of the next generation.

Getting the Religion Clause Cart Before the Horse

2008-10-05T07:10:00.007-05:00

The Religion Clauses of the First Amendment are perhaps the most misunderstood and misconstrued phrases in the United States Constitution. In the past fifty years, starting with McCollum v. Board , the United States Supreme Court has stood the First Amendment on its head, converting what was a strong guarantee of the right of religious citizens to participate in all facets of public life into near police state restrictions. The following excerpt from a recent discourse in First Things titled At the Origins of the Naked Public Square provides an excellent analysis:

The argument of these last several Friday postings is that the no-establishment provision of the first freedom of the First Amendment is entirely in the service of the free exercise provision. I should note, at least in passing, that those devoted to the “original meaning” of the First Amendment argue that it was intended to be no more than a guarantee that the federal government would not interfere with the religious arrangements of the states, some of which had legally established churches. They are right about that.

The tangled and incoherent church-state jurisprudence of the last half century, they say, is the product of a misguided effort to produce elaborate legal doctrine from what was no more than a pragmatic guarantee. They are largely right about that, too. As Philip Hamburger, Clarence Thomas, and others have noted, that misguided effort was powerfully driven by anti-Catholic bigotry. All this is true enough, but our necessary concern is with the religion clause as it has been formed and deformed in the past half century.

The deepest deformation is the subordinating of free exercise to no-establishment. Once we forget that no-establishment is a means and instrument in support of free exercise, it is a short step to talking about the supposed conflict or tension between the two provisions. And from there it is a short step to the claim, as it has been claimed in numerous court decisions, that the two parts of the religion clause are “pitted against one another” and must somehow be “balanced.”

And from there it is but another short step to the idea that the no-establishment provision protects “secular liberty” while the free exercise provision protects “religious liberty.” When the religion clause is construed according to this curious inversion, it is no surprise that religious liberty comes out the loser. Any impingement of religion upon public life is taken to violate the secular liberty of the non-religious. Thus has no-establishment become the master of the free exercise that it was designed to serve.

The balance of the article can be read HERE.

I DO NOT WISH TO BE PUBLISHED ON BNN

2008-10-05T06:13:00.005-05:00

I recently asked David Mastio, the Chief Executive Officer of Blog Net News to remove my blog from the Blog Net News Oklahoma aggregator. I did not ask for my blog to become a part of the BNN network and never gave permission for its use there. And, after seeing my blog listed on the same page as a homosexual marriage announcement and a blasphemous parody of the birth of Jesus Christ, I decided that BNN, despite many fine and respected bloggers who do participate there, is nevertheless an enterprise that I do not care to be publicly associated with. When I asked to be removed, Mr. Mastio replied in part with the following:

Now that the blogosphere is clearly a player, the bloggers that make it up have to get used to the fact that they are news. If sticking by our commitment to bring people the most comprehensive information on what’s happening in each state’s public affairs blogosphere — bringing transparency — means we are unpopular in some quarters, that’s a price we’re willing to pay.

So, in the name of "transparency" and the First Amendment Mr. Mastio has decided that I, through my blog, must march in the same daily cyber parade as people who insult me personally, attack my clients, denigrate my values and blaspheme my faith. In the name of so-called "freedom of speech" (and making a buck) Mr. Mastio is perfectly willing to tell me that I have two choices, either do not publish a blog at all or publish it in his forum which denies me my constitutional right to free association.

And that is the problem with people like Mr. Mastio. They do not understand or care that there are people like myself who find some BNN participants bad mannered and boorish to the point that we are embarrassed to be publicly associated with them. Notice that I am not suggesting that these people be censored or punished in any way for publishing their hate and drivel. I am simply saying that if BNN does not choose edit their publication more carefully, I don't choose to be publicly associated with it. But, Mr. Mastio is telling me I have no choice in the matter.

A gentleman would say, "If you don't want to participate in my publication I certainly won't force you to. I can't stop other bloggers from quoting you under the fair use doctrine but I won't continue the daily use of your name and work on my site if you really object to their presence there." But, Mr. Mastio did not say that, so you can draw your own conclusions.

The Right of Free Association

2008-10-04T07:51:00.007-05:00

Many people these days have the mistaken idea that private individuals must associate with people and organizations they find insulting and whose values they find antithetical to their own. While this may be true to a certain extent in the public context, it is not true concerning private voluntary associations. This basic freedom was upheld and firmly restated by the United States Supreme Court in Dale v. Boy Scouts of America:

In Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 622 (1984), we observed that “implicit in the right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment” is “a corresponding right to associate with others in pursuit of a wide variety of political, social, economic, educational, religious, and cultural ends.” ... Government actions that may unconstitutionally burden this freedom may take many forms, one of which is “intrusion into the internal structure or affairs of an association” like a “regulation that forces the group to accept members it does not desire.” Id., at 623. Forcing a group to accept certain members may impair the ability of the group to express those views, and only those views, that it intends to express. Thus, “[f ]reedom of association … plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate.” Ibid.

Given that the Boy Scouts engages in expressive activity, we must determine whether the forced inclusion of Dale as an assistant scoutmaster would significantly affect the Boy Scouts' ability to advocate public or private viewpoints. This inquiry necessarily requires us first to explore, to a limited extent, the nature of the Boy Scouts' view of homosexuality.

The Boy Scouts asserts that it "teach[es] that homosexual conduct is not morally straight," Brief for Petitioners 39, and that it does "not want to promote homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior," Reply Brief for Petitioners 5. We accept the Boy Scouts' assertion. We need not inquire further to determine the nature of the Boy Scouts' expression with respect to homosexuality. ...

We must then determine whether Dale's presence as an assistant scoutmaster would significantly burden the Boy Scouts' desire to not "promote homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior." Reply Brief for Petitioners 5. As we give deference to an association's assertions regarding the nature of its expression, we must also give deference to an association's view of what would impair its expression. See, e.g., La Follette, supra, at 123-124 (considering whether a Wisconsin law burdened the National Party's associational rights and stating that "a State, or a court, may not constitutionally substitute its own judgment for that of the Party"). That is not to say that an expressive association can erect a shield against antidiscrimination laws simply by asserting that mere acceptance of a member from a particular group would impair its message. But here Dale, by his own admission, is one of a group of gay Scouts who have "become leaders in their community and are open and honest about their sexual orientation." App. 11. Dale was the copresident of a gay and lesbian organization at college and remains a gay rights activist. Dale's presence in the Boy Scouts would, at the very least, force the organization to send a message, both to the youth members and the world, that the Boy Scouts accepts homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior.

Hurley is illustrative on this point. There we considered whether the application of Massachusetts' public accommodations law to require the organizers of a private St. Patrick's Day parade to include among the marchers an Irish-American gay, lesbian, and bisexual group, GLIB, violated the parade organizers' First Amendment rights. We noted that the parade organizers did not wish to exclude the GLIB members because of their sexual orientations, but because they wanted to march behind a GLIB banner. We observed:

"[A] contingent marching behind the organization's banner would at least bear witness to the fact that some Irish are gay, lesbian, or bisexual, and the presence of the organized marchers would suggest their view that people of their sexual orientations have as much claim to unqualified social acceptance as heterosexuals ... . The parade's organizers may not believe these facts about Irish sexuality to be so, or they may object to unqualified social acceptance of gays and lesbians or have some other reason for wishing to keep GLIB's message out of the parade. But whatever the reason, it boils down to the choice of a speaker not to propound a particular point of view, and that choice is presumed to lie beyond the government's power to control." 515 U. S., at 574-575.

Here, we have found that the Boy Scouts believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the values it seeks to instill in its youth members; it will not "promote homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior." Reply Brief for Petitioners 5. As the presence of GLIB in Boston's St. Patrick's Day parade would have interfered with the parade organizers' choice not to propound a particular point of view, the presence of Dale as an assistant scoutmaster would just as surely interfere with the Boy Scout's choice not to propound a point of view contrary to its beliefs.

So, the bottom line here is that people who find homosexual behavior inconsistent with their personal faith and values are not required to continue private, voluntary associations they find offensive and people who do, do so at the risk of diluting or even defeating their own message to the contrary.

REGULAR ARMY BCT DEPLOYED TO US FOR CROWD CONTROL!!!!!

2008-10-03T10:21:00.004-05:00

From the Army Times:
-----------------------

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks...

this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.

“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,” said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. “Now, the plan is to assign a force every year.”

... they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

The package is for use only in war-zone operations, not for any domestic purpose.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds.”

The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).

“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home ... and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”

While soldiers’ combat training is applicable, he said, some nuances don’t apply.

“If we go in, we’re going in to help American citizens on American soil, to save lives, provide critical life support, help clear debris, restore normalcy and support whatever local agencies need us to do, so it’s kind of a different role,” said Cloutier, who, as the division operations officer on the last rotation, learned of the homeland mission a few months ago while they were still in Iraq.

Some brigade elements will be on call around the clock, during which time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. That’s because the unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission.

.....

Correction:

A non-lethal crowd control package fielded to 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, described in the original version of this story, is intended for use on deployments to the war zone, not in the U.S., as previously stated.

Coburn's Sobering Words

2008-10-03T07:31:00.004-05:00

This morning, I listened to Dr. Tom Coburn explain his bail out vote on Tulsa talk radio station KFAQ. Coburn explained why he, perhaps the most fiscally conservative senator on the hill, voted for an admittedly unconstitutional and certainly too expensive bail out plan for the mortgage mess.

Tom Coburn has never been accused of having a lot of political finesse. He calls them like he sees them and he has called some wrong in the past. And, those wrong calls have hurt Oklahoma and Oklahoma's citizens. But, there has never been any doubt about his character and commitment to his principles. Tom Coburn believes that the United States economy is in such a serious state that it was necessary for him to abandon his principles to save the country from a Great Depression style failure.

Coburn is not a politician. He is a man of science and his scientific mind showed this morning in his KFAQ interview. He convinced me that his decision was based upon objective evidence and that he was willing to take the hit he is taking now to do what he thinks is in his constituents and the country's best interests. He quoted facts and figures that other politicians who voted against the bail out are not mentioning.

I was deeply concerned about the economy before I listened to Coburn this morning. I am now seriously frightened. If the information available to a U.S. Senator WHO IS NOT IN THE LOOP ON THE HILL is enough to make him cast a vote this out of character, then things are truly bad indeed.

Dems, Obama Complicit in Financial Crisis

2008-10-02T06:07:00.002-05:00

A Rude Awakening ...

2008-09-29T06:57:00.003-05:00

Like much of the nation, I woke up this morning to hear the President of the United States on the radio. When you have a problem so serious that the President is addressing the nation at 6:30 A.M. something is very wrong.

Bush's face was ashen. The strain of the weekend was apparent. His words were equally sobering. He made no promises that the bailout proposal worked out over the weekend would cure the nation's economic ills. As a matter of fact he said just the opposite. The President said in no uncertain terms that even if the bailout bill is passed the United States and by implication much of the world face perilous economic times ahead.

Bush confirmed the worst projections that had been circulating last week, that is that the credit market had completely exhausted its liquidity and that many businesses would not be able to meet this week's payroll. Dow future's were down 150 at the time that this blog entry was being written and Lord only knows what the market will do when it opens given the tone of Bush's speech.

These are the facts. Over the past four or five decades, America changed from a production based national economy to a consumer based global economy. When we were being sold the bill of goods called the global market we were told that only junk jobs held by unskilled workers would be exported. Think about that the next time you drive down the street in your Mexican assembled Japanese branded car or take a flight on a Brazilian or European manufactured mid-range airliner. The American auto and aerospace workers who could have made those products for you are now frying hamburgers or driving trucks shipping foreign products around the country. Those skills and jobs are lost forever. We traded good paying blue and grey collar highly skilled manufacturing jobs for minimum wage service sector jobs. The Chinese and the Asians who protected their own workers and manufacturing base are now laughing at us all the way to the bank ... and that bank has a sign out front that says, "Americans Not Welcome."

Since we don't build anything anymore, we are not creating wealth. We have sustained the economy of the past several decades by literally spending the accumulation of national wealth earned since the founding of the nation and when that was exhausted by borrowing the money to keep up appearances from foreign powers who do make things (like China) and who also save instead of borrow. Last week, the Chinese government instructed its banks to issue no more loans to American banks. So, our massive trade deficit with China is now a one way street and there is no way for us access the trillions of dollars we have invested in their manufacturing economy instead of our own.

Make no mistake. This is 1929 all over and it remains to be seen if we will be able to weather the coming storm with the same strength and courage of our forefathers.

Three Colorable Claims Concerning Barack Hussein Obama

2008-09-28T10:26:00.006-05:00

The so-called "Obama Truth Squads" now operating in states like Missouri, South Carolina and Pennsylvania as well as the internet are composed in part of Democratic elected officials such as law enforcement officials and officers of the court. They are a frightening example of the lengths that Obama's supporters will go to to enforce their will upon the people of the United States. The sole purpose of these so-called "truth squads" is to intimidate their political opposition under color of law and quash debate concerning their chosen candidate for president.

The word "colorable" is a legal term of art which has been defined in some courts as, "a claim that, if taken as true, in the light most favorableto the petitioner would entitle the petitioner to relief." In plain English, a colorable claim is one that presents enough evidence on its face that further investigation and inquiry is warranted. Three such colorable claims are presented concerning the qualification and fitness of Barack Hussein Obama to serve as President of the United States:

1. The first is that Barack Hussein Obama is NOT a natural born citizen of the United States. Obama claims to have been born in Hawaii. There is very disturbing evidence however that he was born in Kenya and was later "registered" in the United States. If that is the case he is not a natural born citizen of the United States and is not qualified to serve as President under Article II of the U.S. Constitution. Obama could also claim Kenyan citizenship and allegations have been made that he may also be a Canadian citizen and that a Canadian birth certificate was issued. A DEMOCRATIC operative has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania demanding that the court issue a declaratory judgment stating that Obama is not qualified to run or serve as President of the United States and enjoining Obama from further campaign activity. A copy of that sworn complaint can be read HERE.

2. The second is that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. The United States Constitution provides that there shall be no religious test for any public office or trust of the United States. However, lying about his religion calls Obama's fitness for public office into question and that IS, in my opinion at least, a perfectly constitutional question. The first colorable piece of evidence that Obama is a Muslim is his name, Barack HUSSEIN Obama. Hussein is perhaps the most common middle name in the Shia faith. Hussein was a direct descendant of Mohammed and one of his favorite wives Fatima. He was martyred in the tenth century. Shia muslims celebrate the date of his martyrdom. The second colorable piece of evidence is the registration of one Barry Soeto in the Francis Assisi Catholic school in Jakarta, Indonesia. Barry Soeto is one of the several psuedonyms and aka's by which Barack Hussein Obama has been known around the world. (He was sued under five or six of these names in the Pennsylvania complaint.) This school registration form, obtained by a respected journalist in that part of the world and verified by ABC news clearly lists Obama's religion as "Muslim" like his fathers. A photograph of that enrollment form can be viewed HERE. Obama claims to have never practiced Islam but that claim is brought into question by first hand accounts recorded by World Net Daily (full story HERE) :

The Indonesian media have been flooded with accounts of Obama's childhood Islamic studies, some describing him as a religious Muslim .Speaking to the country's Kaltim Post, Tine Hahiyary, who was principal of Obama's school while he was enrolled there, said she recalls he studied the Quran in Arabic.

"At that time, I was not Barry's teacher but he is still in my memory" claimed Tine, who is 80 years old. The Kaltim Post says Obama's teacher, named Hendri, died.

"I remember that he studied 'mengaji (recitation of the Quran)," Tine said, according to an English translation by Loatze.

Mengaji, or the act of reading the Quran with its correct Arabic punctuation, is usually taught to more religious pupils and is not known as a secular study. Also, Loatze documented the Indonesian daily Banjarmasin Post caught up with Rony Amir, an Obama classmate and Muslim, who describe Obama as "previously quite religious in Islam." (Please note that this link to a legitimate foreign newspaper is now blocked for some reason.)
"We previously often asked him to the prayer room close to the house. If he was wearing a sarong (waist fabric worn for religious or casual occasions) he looked funny," Amir said.

The Los Angeles Times, which sent a reporter to Jakarta, quoted Zulfin Adi, who identified himself as among Obama's closest childhood friends, stating the presidential candidate prayed in a mosque, something Obama's campaign claimed he never did.

"We prayed but not really seriously, just following actions done by older people in the mosque. But as kids, we loved to meet our friends and went to the mosque together and played," said Adi.

Obama's official campaign site has a page titled "Obama has never been a Muslim, and is a committed Christian." The page states, "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ."

Obama claims to be "committed" Christian but did not bother to change his religiously charged Muslim middle name. Based upon that alone, he would be recognized as a Shia Muslim by most of the Islamic world. He claims to have never studied or practiced Islam despite numerous eyewitness accounts to the contrary and the fact that his father registered him as Muslim in a country which required compulsory religious training in all schools negates the claim that he never practiced the faith. (Catholic schools in Indonesia at that time would take children of all faiths and release them for religious training in their particular faith.) So, the question of whether or not Barack HUSSEIN Obama is Muslim is certainly colorable at minimum.

3. Given the above, if Barack Hussein Obama were not the Democratic Presidential candidate could he qualify for a security clearance to view top secret and above military and diplomatic documents. The short answer here is not only no but HELL NO. With: (a) mulitple pseudonyms and identities, (b) questions about his birth country and citizenship including the likelihood of mulitple birth certificates in foreign countries, and (c) the likelihood of ties to a religion with terrorist ties, he would never qualify for any sensitive government or military job if he were anyone other than the Anointed One of the American left.

The American people deserve truthful answers to these more than colorable questions not "Truth Squads" trying to intimidate them into silence under color of law.

------------------------------------------

The following biographical facts leading to reasonable inference that Obama is or was a Muslim are taken from a copyrighted story in the Jerusalem Post which can be read in its entirety HERE:

• Obama's Kenyan birth father: In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936-1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
• Obama's Indonesian family: His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was also a Muslim. In fact, as Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng explained to Jodi Kantor of The New York Times: "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim." An Indonesian publication, The Banjarmasin Post, reports a former classmate, Rony Amir, recalling that "All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims."
• Obama's Catholic school in Jakarta: Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that "documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim" while at a Catholic school during first through third grades. Kim Barker of The Chicago Tribune confirms that Obama was "listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school."
• The public school: Paul Watson of The Los Angeles Times learned from Indonesians familiar with Obama when he lived in Jakarta that he "was registered by his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended." Haroon Siddiqui of The Toronto Star visited the Jakarta public school Obama attended and found that "Three of his teachers have said he was enrolled as a Muslim." Although Siddiqui cautions that "With the school records missing, eaten by bugs, one has to rely on people's shifting memories," he cites only one retired teacher, Tine Hahiyari, retracting her earlier certainty about Obama's being registered as a Muslim.
• Barack Obama's public school in Jakarta, Koran class: In his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, Obama relates how he got into trouble for making faces during Koran studies. Indeed, Obama still retains knowledge from that class: Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times reports that Obama "recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them [to Kristof] with a first-rate accent."
• Mosque attendance: Obama's half-sister recalled that the family attended the mosque "for big communal events." Watson learned from childhood friends that "Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque." Barker found that "Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers." One Indonesia friend, Zulfin Adi, states that Obama "was Muslim. He went to the mosque. I remember him wearing a sarong" (a garment associated with Muslims).
• Piety: Obama himself says that while living in Indonesia, a Muslim country, he "didn't practice [Islam]." Indonesians differ in their memories of him. One, Rony Amir, describes Obama as "previously quite religious in Islam."

OBAMA'S HAVING been born and raised a Muslim and having left the faith to become a Christian make him neither more nor less qualified to become president of the United States. But if he was born and raised a Muslim and is now hiding that fact, this points to a major deceit, a fundamental misrepresentation about himself that has profound implications about his character and his suitability as president.

The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and is the Taube/Diller distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Obama Orders Police State Tactics in Missouri

2008-09-27T15:32:00.004-05:00

The Drudge Report is carrying a statement by Missouri Governor Matt Blunt which accuses Barrack Obama of trying to employ Democratic law enforcement officials to silence critics:

“St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.

“What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.“This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights.

The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election."

We know a lot about that kind of stuff already here in Oklahoma where a recall petition or an initiative petition unfriendly to entrenched Democratic interests never seems to pass some legal test and people who question the process or complain about it too loudly wind up behind bars.

A few years ago, a Christian writer posed the question, "How do you know when you are living in a police state? He proposed that America was a police state then even before the draconian encroachments on our First and Fourth Amendment freedoms we now endure. But, if there was any doubt, this should prove it to all.

Bailout or Not, It's Gonna Be A Blue Christmas

2008-09-25T07:08:00.009-05:00

An ashen faced George Bush warned the nation last night that if his so called economic bail out plan is not passed the nation is facing a painful recession. The words "painful recession" may the euphemism of the decade if not the century. In a copyrighted story on Reuters, former GE President Jack Welch observed, "I now believe we are in for one hell of a deep downturn." Welch told the World Business Forum in New York on Wednesday that the first quarter of 2009 will likely be "brutal."

Many thoughtful commentators are now comparing the events of the past few days to those of October, 1929 which kicked off the Great Depression. These same commentators see the so-called "Bush Bailout" not as a cure for the problem but rather as a parachute to ease the shock of the virtually inevitable crash of the American economy.

There is plenty of blame to go around. The mortgage industry bears its share for making obscene profits on nearly worthless paper. The housing industry bears its share for continuing to build homes that everyone realized weren't likely to be sold at anywhere near their asking price or even their projected cost. Government bears huge responsibility for social experimentation in the mortgage industry which forced lenders to write mortgages to people who simply could not and never would be able to afford the homes they bought and for an overall monetary policy that artificially inflated everything in the financial sector. And most of all, the American people bear responsibility for a multi decade credit and spending binge that has transferred nearly all of the nation's hard assets to foreign investors in return for cheap consumer goods and ever more expensive energy. Separately or combined, it was and is an unsustainable economic model.

If last week was a 1929 style crash, and I believe it was, then it will take about ninety days for the effects to be felt. Credit will tighten and as it does the marginal households who have been living on credit will begin defaulting on everything from credit card payments to car payments to mortgages to utility bills. That in turn will deny income to wiser citizens who had been living within their means but have little if any cushion for an emergency of this type. As credit dries up, businesses will slow down or fail altogether, layoffs will begin and, unthinkable as it is, the whole great machine we call the American economy will grind to a halt just as it did in the grim early months of 1930.

But, there are great differences between the America of 1930 and the America of 2008. 1930 America was still based upon a primarily rural, agricultural economy. While there was great suffering by many, many families could still grow their own food, butcher their own meat and maintain a sustenance level existence. There was enough, for lack of a better term, structure to maintain a semblance of normality and governance. Modern Americans lack both the skills and the moral fiber of our Dust Bowl ancestors and our society lacks the local, small scale structure to take care of its own. I shudder to think about the social chaos that could result from a 1930's style Depression given our modern, hedonistic, consumption obsessed population. Perhaps the closest historical comparison would be the Weimar Republic and we all know how well that ended.

Over the years, I have advised a lot of people in personal financial crises. Given the recent changes to bankruptcy law and the virtual inability to charge off most credit card debt, I usually tell the ones who come to me early that they have from sixty to ninety days to get their houses in order, preserve a few hard assets if they are lucky and make plans to feed, clothe and house their families through a long hard spell. Given what I am hearing and reading about the economy this week, that might be good advice for a lot of us today. In short, don't buy that big screen for Christmas just yet, you may need the money for the light bill.

The Afflicted Heart of the Legal Profession

2008-09-21T06:11:00.009-05:00

I participate in an international online discussion group of Christian lawyers. The talk on this list is often terse and to the point. A lot of it has to do with sharing resources, strategies and making referrals. But sometimes the discussion is profound. Last night, the topic was the morality of California lawyers resigning from their various state legal organizations that oppose California Proposition 8. Proposition 8 is a ballot initiative which, if successful, would result in a state constitutional amendment banning so called gay marriage. I read the following post from a D.C. area attorney comparing the current moral crisis for Christian attorneys to the decision many Christian attorneys made over a decade ago to leave the ABA over their support for abortion rights, etc. With that attorney's permission, I am repeating his post here for public consumption:

I too resigned from the ABA over the abortion issue in 1998. Like others on this string, I got a form-letter reply to my note of explanation regarding why I, in good conscience could no longer remain part of that organization. In the years after my resignation, I received form-letter invitations to rejoin the ABA. I ignored them.

I have thought a lot about why abortion proponents are so resistant to any kind of morally based logic as to why abortion is an affront to the concept of justice, that is defending the innocent from predators and a grave moral evil. I have concluded that the heart is the portal to the human mind. It is from the heart of man that great wickedness in the world emerges.

In Romans 1, Paul warns us that, when a person turns his face from God, his thinking becomes "futile" (NIV) and his "foolish heart" is "darkened." Romans 1:21. So, when a person rejects God, he becomes, in essence, an "afflicted person." He loses the capacity to evaluate data and draw moral inferences from it, even in his own self-interest. This affliction walls off the mind from any idea that the heart has rejected a priori. Because the portal to the mind is closed to facts and reason, no argument, no matter how compelling, can be honestly evaluated. It is this "heart affliction" that has turned the light of reason off in the minds of so many of the most gifted intellects in our remarkable, yet deeply troubled, civilization. The collective "afflicted heart" of our profession has brought us to the place where the Rule of Law lies on its deathbed, barely capable of drawing a breath.

C.S. Lewis observed that the human heart is like a citadel, a mighty fortress that nurtures the great lie of the hegemony of Self implanted in the soul at the Fall of Man. Lewis proclaimed that the only thing that serves to breach the great wall of moral rejection endemic to the human soul is enduring pain which takes it down to the bare metal of despair. "Pain," Lewis observed, "plants the flag of truth in the fortress of the rebel soul." It is through this pain that heart of man is opened, giving him "ears to hear" and " eyes to see." Prayer and winsome civility during these times of pain are just about the only things that stand a chance of cracking open the hardened heart.

Well said, Counselor.

Un-Representative Government At Its Worst

2008-09-20T06:09:00.011-05:00

To no one's surprise in particular, two Tulsa City Councilors who failed to even notify their neighborhoods that a huge homeless shelter was going to built there, much less help them fight it, have been temporarily reprieved. City officials declared that the recall petition directed against them by angry citizens did not state a sufficient cause of action to allow the initiative to continue to a vote because the councilors had no legal duty to communicate with their constituents or represent their interests!

The sheer arrogance of this statement is simply mind boggling. Councilor David Patrick does a great job of communicating with some of the citizens of Tulsa. He was recently cleared (again to no one in particular's surprise) in an ethics investigation which alleged that Mayor Kathy Taylor inappropriately sent a private jet to Colorado to fetch him for a key vote. If that weren't bad enough, it now appears that a Tulsa powerbroker with an interest in that vote just happened to be on the airplane at the same time. Given subsequent events, Patrick certainly had no problems with that message.

So, the pattern is becoming clear. If you and your friends can't kick in ten or twenty grand each to hire a team of lawyers to take on city hall, you can pretty well forget about your rights in municipal government. And, if you can't afford a Lear Jet to host the meeting and an "expert" to put on the Lear Jet to state your case for you, you might as well forget about even hearing from your city councilor on key issues, much less influencing him.

Councilors Gomez and Patrick apparently don't have a hearing problem. They can meet with and even skillfully represent the interests of the people they are willing to listen to. The problem is, the people they are willing to listen to are not their constituents. The most commonly used definition of American representative government comes from Lincoln's Gettsyburg Address, "government of the people, by the people and for the people." But, given the Gomez and Patrick decision, it is obvious that the City of Tulsa has adopted a new definition, "government of the rich and powerful, by the rich and powerful and for the rich and powerful."

The Gomez and Patrick decision may have been legally correct. I don't know and the folks who wrote the petition language won't know either since they probably can't afford an appeal to find out, a fact that was lost on no one, especially City officials. But, the fact that an act can be declared legal says nothing about its justice. The residents of White City and the surrounding neighborhoods may not be able to pass the hat at Southern Hills and subscribe enough money to hire a silk stocking law firm. And, they may not be able put a councilor on a Lear Jet or invite him to The Summit Club for lunch to have a little chat about their concerns. But, the neighborhood residents can vote and unless the folks these councilors are actually representing can figure out a way to literally buy the next election for them over the objection of several thousand furious neighborhood residents, their careers in Tulsa City government are over.

Poisoning the Well ...

2008-09-17T12:08:00.002-05:00

Long ago and far away, I was a reporter for a small daily newspaper. I worked the police, crime and courts beat as well as covering local politics and other "hard news." I wrote so much of page one and page two every day that the editor made me quit using my byline because it was embarrassing him. My stuff was regularly "picked up" (reprinted with credit but no pay) by the other papers in the region. And, I would even make the AP every once in a while. From my vantage point as a professional observer, I developed a unique ability to sense the attitude of the community. I like to think that I have not lost that sense.

The current situation with the proposed homeless shelter in the White City neighborhood of Tulsa reminds me greatly of something that happened in that far away little city long ago. One of the wealthier local families decided to make a profit on a piece of their ranch land by selling it to out of state interests for use as a massive toxic waste dump. The land seemed ideally suited for the purpose since it was in a small and more easily handled county that bordered on a larger metropolitan area with a significant need for toxic waste disposal. Local government welcomed the proposal as did the local financial community ... at least at first. But, there were other other considerations as well. The proposed site also bordered on some of the finest farms and ranches in the region. It even bordered on some far out suburban neighborhoods of the larger metropolitan area. And, it could have affected the water table for some of the finest agricultural land in the state.

Despite a massive PR campaign by the landowner, the proposed new owners, local government and the local financial community, opposition to the project just would not go away. There was all of the usual hoopla. Television reporters were everywhere for a while, there were mass rallies and a lot of threats were apparently made by both sides. But then, some of the neighboring ranchers got serious. I talked to some of these folks at the time and I have never seen a madder bunch of cowboys and cowgirls in my life. I don't know if this actually happened, but I heard it from enough separate sources to believe it even if I couldn't print it at the time. I was told that some of the larger bordering ranch owners walked in to the office of the president of a local bank that was supporting the project, threw their house keys on his desk and told him, "If this goes through you can have the whole place, mortgage, stock, equipment, loans and all. We're driving away and not looking back. You can have it." If this had happened, it would have been a disaster for the bank.

Whatever actually happened, the opposition to the project worked and the toxic waste dump was not placed in that county. But, another kind of toxic waste was left. The attempt by previously trusted community leaders to ruin the property values and livelihood of hundreds or even thousands of their neighbors literally poisoned the community well both politically and commercially. Lifelong friendships and commercial associations changed. The preference for dealing with some local institutions disappeared. And, in my estimation, a promising local political career or two ended.

In my opinion, the well has already been poisoned here in Tulsa. The people who attempted to ramrod the proposed White City homeless shelter down the throats of that neighborhood will never regain the complete trust or respect of the White City neighborhood residents. But, if my blog visitor tracking software is accurate, other people in other neighborhoods and even other cities and states are looking on as well. The mistrust and lack of respect may be spreading. The best thing the people supporting this project can do at this point is to kill it and start over somewhere else while they only have one neighborhood in revolt. If they don't, the revolt could spread to the whole city and beyond.

The View From White City

2008-09-15T06:09:00.007-05:00

I am a lawyer. I am in the business of helping people get through conflict. One of the greatest hindrances I have found in this task is people's inability to see a situation from the other side's viewpoint. I live in one of the neighborhoods adjoining White City. I don't think the folks trying to force a homeless shelter down the throats of the White City neighborhoods have really considered the view from the other side.

To put our position in context, you have to know something about the neighborhood. White City and the neighborhoods surrounding it are some of the few left in Tulsa where working people can actually own a home that they can afford. For decades now, realtors and the banking industry have encouraged average people to buy more home than they need and certainly more than they can afford. Americans have so overspent on their housing that the whole economy is threatened. The older, usually well built and well maintained homes in White City are one of the few places in Tulsa where blue collar, gray collar, white collar and professionals can live in an economically diverse neighborhood and all still stay within the economic goal of paying no more than a third of their total household income for housing including maintenance, utilities, necessary upgrades, etc. It is an old fashioned mixed class, mixed income neighborhood that should be the model for future developments instead of the dumping ground for city problems.

It is a neighborhood with challenges. Prostitution on Eleventh Street has always been a problem on and off. Rent speculators, pimping government subsidized Section 8 benefits, have created mini-slums on some blocks. The streets are in desperate need of attention and TPD is paying less and less attention to neighborhood crime, especially neighbor on neighbor problems that often occur when you mix people working for the roof over their heads with folks who have that roof provided for them by the government.

At its most basic, the proposed Admiral and Yale homeless shelter appears to be a giant rip off to the average White City resident. Joe Sixpack, Susan Secretary and Ernie Engineer see nothing more than an attempt to handle a downtown problem by exporting it to their neighborhood. Combine that with the fact that the proposed downtown "baseball" trust is aggressively trying to control the property values and development around THEIR investment and the whole deal appears profoundly hypocritical. The downtown elites are using all of their political and legal power to prevent the very type of development risk that THEY THEMSELVES are forcing down the throats of the White City residents. Taken at its most basic they are saying that their for-profit investment in a ball park deserves the city's protection while the White City residents investment in their homes does not.

The pairing of the Driller's Stadium issue with the homeless shelter fiasco creates a whole new line of inquiry. Joe Sixpack can't see why the folks downtown are so hell bent upon moving the Drillers in the first place. They have a relatively new, well maintained ball park already with plenty of parking and easy accessibility from all over town. Why cram it into a hole downtown where even more expensive solutions like light rail are necessary to cure the parking and accessibility problems?

When Joe, Susan and Ernie all sit down together in someone's living room and try to figure out a way to save their neighborhood, it is almost impossible to present any motivation for their city government's actions other than profit. A lot of already wealthy individuals are going to make a whole lot more money on this deal over the next several years and a lot of people in White City are going to lose their homes or at least be stuck with a home that is unsellable. Obviously, some of that money being made downtown is going to come out of Joe, Susan and Ernie's investment in their home.

So called "mainstreaming" sounds wonderfully compassionate so long as you don't have to be personally involved. In this case, a Tulsa neighborhood is going to pay dearly for someone else's "compassion" and so are the people they are trying to help. Placing a homeless shelter at the intersection of a busy street and an interstate highway doesn't seem like a very good idea unless you want to reduce the number of homeless through traffic fatalities. Taking the homeless from a place where they were within walking distance of all their needed services and placing them in another where they are miles away on an infrequently served bus route doesn't make much sense at all. As a matter of fact, to Joe and Susan and Ernie it seems like a formula for having a lot of people walking through their neighborhoods and hanging around the neighborhood bus stops and parks.

My neighborhood has experience with a so-called "mainstreaming" experiment. After several years, the "mainstreamed" neighbor is still there. But, the previously occupied homes on both sides of his are boarded up as is the previously occupied home one house down on one side. The home next to the boarded up home on the other side sold at one point on a contract for deed but the buyer cancelled after a few weeks because of the problems with the "mainstreamed" neighbor. It became a Section 8 rental unit. One of the houses across the street went vacant after the young couple who lived there couldn't take it anymore. They tried for months to sell their home with no luck. It is now a rental unit. That's five homes whose values have been severely degraded due to one property. The character of the whole neighborhood changed. And, it's not as though the homeowners were passive. Far from it. Over the years, there were at least fifty calls to the police. Many of them went unanswered. There were petitions to the police department and DA which resulted in no determinative action. The fire department answered dozens of calls about trash fires and made arrests for illegal burning more than once.

Nobody trying force this deal down Joe, Susan and Ernie's throats will ever have to look out their front door and see a homeless person urinating or defecating on their front yard. Nobody on the ball park trust will be afraid to let their children play outdoors or be forced to tell their children they can't play in their neighborhood park because it is full of strange people drinking from brown paper bags. Nobody on the Mental Health Association board of directors will have to lie awake all night while a "neighbor" off his meds beats on a trash can, cursing and yelling for his neighbors to wake up. Nobody who is making a profit on this series of deals will have to sit for an hour or more behind a locked door waiting for TPD to respond to a "low priority" neighborhood dispute ... if they respond at all. And, nobody in the alphabet soup organizations pushing this plan will have to talk a normally peaceful neighbor out of harming the person who has made his family live in constant fear and made his own life a living hell.

Taken at its most basic, Joe reasons, "They are taking the Ball Park downtown and giving us their homeless. There's nothing in this deal for me for me but trouble. As a matter of fact, they are crapping all over me and my neighborhood. So, there's nothing left to do but fight." And, try as I might, I can't see a single argument to refute Joe's logic.

All The Wrong Reasons

2008-09-07T07:01:00.004-05:00

I find it hard to get up much enthusiasm for presidential elections anymore. What should be a serious discourse leading up to the selection of two of America's best and brightest to lead us has turned into a media frenzy with opposing "brands" being hawked to an ever more addle brained electorate like soda pop or feminine hygiene products.

Anyone who thinks that Barrack Obama and Joe Biden are the best and brightest of the Democratic party is simply deluded. Obama has almost no assets which recommend him to become the leader of the free world. Were it not for his race and almost hypnotic personal charisma, Obama would and should be the under qualified junior senator from Illinois, struggling to learn his job. As a matter of fact, Obama is so unqualified and in a word scary that the GOP base is now willing to enthusiastically support a candidate that has thumbed his nose at them for his entire career.

Which brings us to the GOP. Only the deeply frightening possibility of a Barrack Obama presidency could make John McCain a viable GOP candidate. And even then, he had to spring Sarah Palin on the party to get his foundering campaign off dead center. Sarah Palin is actually polling more favorably than either McCain or Obama. That says something profound about the process that gave us both presidential candidates.

The Palin phenomenon is a perfect illustration of the problem. Almost everything I learn about her is impressive. She is smart, decent and tough. But, she has a short resume in public life and unproven leadership skills on the scale that may be required of her. If she is elected, she will be a heartbeat away from the presidency because she is a woman, can make a great speech, is cute as the dickens and has managed to fire up a base that McCain has studiously insulted for his entire career. None of these are good enough reasons for her to be that close to being president of the United States and certainly not good enough reasons to elect McCain.

What should be a sober public exercise in due diligence for all concerned has become a combination of American Idol for the Democrats and a pep rally, complete with a drop dead gorgeous cheerleader, for the GOP. You have to ask yourself, is this really the best we can do? The margins in this election may be razor thin. One very astute commentator observed this week that shamefully, if Obama is elected it will be because of his race and if McCain is elected it will probably be because of the sex and religion of his VP choice. Standing alone, these are not good enough reasons to elect a president.

Though I hate to admit it, John McCain is the only marginally qualified presidential candidate in the race though, based upon his previous positions on many key issues, he should be running as a Democrat. Obama is years away from being qualified to be president and needs to be seriously vetted concerning his family history and past associations. Joe Biden is marginally qualified to run for VP but he should be running as a socialist. And Sarah Palin, impressive as she is, is still an unproven quantity. So, what we actually have is a defacto Democrat, McCain, who first triangulated against his own base and then bought their votes late in the game with his VP choice running against a completely inexperienced near Marxist with a family history and series of political associations that would probably prevent him from getting a security clearance if he were an enlisted man in the military instead of a candidate for commander in chief.

There are dozens of better qualified people on both sides of the aisle. What is the matter with the system that is keeping them from rising to the top? Which of course begs the question, what is the matter with us, the electorate, that we tolerate this American Idol, pep rally, Coke commercial system of selecting a president?

Palin's Predicament

2008-09-04T05:18:00.004-05:00

The long knives have already been drawn against Sarah Palin in the GOP establishment and she hasn't even been elected yet. Palin is not and never will be a member of that class and they will never forget it or let her. The old school country club wing of the GOP is already circling her like a pack of wolves ready to devour her as soon as she has served her purpose as Christian bait in the November elections. Peggy Noonan's snarky remarks caught on tape by MSNBC are simply an echo of the pervasive attitude among the GOP elite that will eventually spell the demise of the party and perhaps the country. The NeoCons are already sniping and the chattering class is reporting that Palin has been placed in charge of NeoCon handlers .... likely to keep her under observation and control.

The McCain/Palin ticked can be compared to the marriage of a strong, pretty evangelical girl to an old womanizer. She wants love, respect and a fair partnership and he wants something else entirely. Chuck Baldwin explores this unlikely political marriage in a recent column (link HERE ):

Herein lies the problem for Sarah Palin. How can a principled conservative support the policies and actions of an unprincipled globalist such as John McCain? As Vice President, Palin will be required to promote and defend McCain's big-government, liberal, and globalist plans. For example, what will she do when John McCain proposes amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, which he is certain to do? What will she do when McCain proposes to close gun shows, or at least the private sale of firearms at gun shows? What will she do when he proposes to increase federal spending for abortion providers (which he has done numerous times as senator)? What will she do when he promotes federal spending for embryonic stem cell research? What will she do when John McCain proliferates Bush's police state machinations by expanding the Patriot Act and similar legislation? What will Palin do when McCain decides to nuke Iran (and who knows what else), not only without a Declaration of War by Congress, but also without provocation or justification? What will she do as John McCain expands the Security and Prosperity Partnership with Canada and Mexico? What will she do as McCain opens the door of the NAFTA superhighway and the North American Union? What will she do as John McCain allows the United Nations to dictate and manipulate America's foreign policy? Again, can two walk together except they be agreed?

Let's face it: John McCain is using Sarah Palin as inducement to trick conservatives into accepting his liberal, big-government, globalist candidacy. And, sadly, it is working.

As I have said before, today's national Christian leaders are among the most gullible people on the planet. They are so desperate to be invited to sit at the king's table that they will compromise practically any principle. But accepting John McCain was a not only a bitter pill, it was a BIG pill, one they could not get down without a major dose of syrup. And that is exactly what Governor Palin brings to the table: sweet syrup to help conservatives swallow John McCain.

Unfortunately, the things that make Palin so attractive (her conservative principles) are the things that she will be forced to surrender in order to be John McCain's running mate. The best thing that can happen to Sarah Palin is for John McCain to lose the November election. This would allow her to go into the 2012 elections as perhaps the Republican Presidential frontrunner. If McCain wins in November, and Palin is forced to serve at the pleasure of this globalist insider for four years, she will be forever ruined as a genuine constitutional conservative. Remember, "No man can serve two masters." One cannot be faithful to the Constitution and a constitutional apostate such as John McCain at the same time. That is an absolute impossibility.

What our conservative friends need to wake up to is the depth of duplicity and wickedness that permeates Washington politics (in both major parties) today. There is nothing that these globalist insiders at the Council on Foreign Relations (of which John McCain is a longtime member) will not do to fulfill their power-mad plans. There is nothing too evil, too sinister, or too iniquitous, including using, abusing, chewing up and then spitting out good people such as Sarah Palin. Even more unfortunate and sad is the fact that the James Dobsons of this world are too blind to see it.

I don't agree with everything Baldwin says and I don't agree with a few of the policy positions of the Constitution party. But, it is always a mistake not to listen to valid criticism and Baldwin makes several valid points.

Palin - The Premature Pick

2008-09-02T09:40:00.007-05:00

Timing is everything in politics. The more I hear about Sarah Palin the more I like her. She is obviously a smart, powerful, remarkably decent woman who has what it takes to be a real player in American politics. But, that does not mean that she was the best choice for McCain's VP this election cycle.

The biggest mistake conservatives, especially evangelical conservatives, make is failure to listen to the opposition. Facts are facts regardless of who presents them. When your opposition makes a valid point, you had better make note of it because you are likely to hear it again under less pleasant circumstances. Over the weekend, I repeatedly heard talking heads making valid points about the Palin choice. She does lack national and international experience and McCain forfeited a great deal of the experience argument against O'Bama by selecting her.

Further, there can be no doubt that a great deal of plain old pandering was involved in her selection. Pandering to women, pandering to evangelicals, pandering to the general conservative base that greatly mistrusts McCain. And, it is working. Her choice has energized the GOP base and made such a splash that it literally sucked the air out of the room for O'Bama. But, that does not change the fact that there were dozens of better qualified men and several better qualified women to choose from. The fact that Palin is so bright, so decent and has such a brilliant future in American politics if she is not prematurely savaged by the process only makes it all the more difficult to swallow. Palin is the perfect lightning rod media candidate that draws attention away from McCain's shortcoming in key constituencies.

I would sincerely hope that Palin is not being offered up as a political sacrificial virgin to save the presidential aspirations of an aging, wealthy, marginally GOP at best, contrarian that was headed for disaster with his base until he made his VP choice. The left wing blogs are already savaging Palin and her family and in so doing diverting attention from McCain while gaining mostly favorable headlines for the combined ticket.

I have nothing but respect for Sarah Palin and her family and I hope that her political future survives whatever happens next. John McCain has observed in the past that the only two functions of the Vice President are to, "inquire about the President's health every morning and attend state funerals." That is typical McCain and Sarah Palin, McCain's politically premature pick deserves better .... and so do the people who will vote for McCain because of her.

Palin VP Choice - Dobson Endorses McCain

2008-08-30T06:18:00.005-05:00

I woke up this morning to learn that Dr. James Dobson has endorsed John McCain for President.

John McCain has not changed. This is the same candidate that sponsored McCain/Feingold which would have pretty well destroyed whatever political power organizations like Dobson's have left as well as trashing the First Amendment in the process. This is the same candidate that has thumbed his nose at his own party to side with Democrats again and again. This is the same McCain who has studiously stiff armed Dobson throughout the entire campaign. As a matter of fact, this is the same candidate that was expected to name a pro-abortion VP candidate if not Democrat Joe Lieberman. And, this is the same candidate that repeatedly ignored the has whole evangelical wing of the GOP until now.

And, I suppose that Dr. Dobson has not changed either. I briefly read his statement this morning with its carefully nuanced explanation of his change of heart. He did leave himself wiggle room in earlier statements and he has now wiggled. But, it is the price of that wiggle that concerns me.

Sarah Palin appears to be a very decent person. Her courage in bringing to term and raising a Down's syndrome baby is inspiring. But, her political record as governor of a small, sparsely populated state does not inspire great confidence in her as a world leader. The decision to place her on the ticket was purely political and had nothing to do with her qualifications past the election. She is pro-life, evangelical and very attractive. And above all else, she is a woman. Consequently, the forces that see the GOP as a brand to be marketed instead of a moral and political cause to be upheld, hope to use her sex to attract disenchanted Hillary constituents. But there is a problem there. She is almost a cliche' ... an extremely attractive young woman that will look awfully good on aging John McCain's arm at official functions. (Student's of John McCain's personal life might see a trend here.)

If the election were a beauty contest she would win hands down. But, despite the fact she is probably a remarkably decent person, an evangelical, a hunter, a former model and beauty queen and just cute as the dickens, she lacks the gravitas a lot of us would like to see in a person who will be one heart beat away from being commander in chief. Evangelical's great relief at who McCain DID NOT pick cannot make up for the enormous gaps in Palin's resume' and by selecting her, McCain gave up the great benefit of offering a proven, seasoned ticket that would provide sharp contrast to O'Bama's lack of experience.

Should McCain be elected, I suspect that Vice President Palin will be assigned mostly ceremonial duties as Dan Quail was and will be carefully managed by controllers. What effect she will have on the direction of a McCain administration is certainly an open question but, using Quail as the template, I suspect it will be minimal. So, it is entirely possible that the last major evangelical endorsement was swapped for an entirely ceremonial and minimally influential seat at the table in a possible McCain administration.

McCain's people called Dr. Dobson and the evangelical's bluff. They knew that if they campaigned far enough to the left to allow whomever was running for the Democrats to run to their far left wing base that the Evangelicals would blink and vote for any GOP candidate out of fear, even a GOP candidate that has insulted them, stiff armed them and refused to make even the empty, nearly meaningless campaign promises that most candidates make to evangelicals in an election year. In this way, McCain can keep strong support from the Country Club wing of the GOP which has always despised and mistrusted evangelicals anyway, campaign hard toward the so called undecided center swing votes, and in the process keep the majority of a evangelical voting bloc for almost no expenditure of political capital. It is a masterful triangulation against his own base that even Bill Clinton would admire.

In 1996 Dr. Dobson wrote: "Only the most partisan supporters of the present regime could insist that we still live in a functioning democracy. (snip) I doubt most Americans are aware of the current impotence of their vote." I think the same can be said about evangelical's influence in the GOP political process right now. Until evangelicals learn to street fight and not sell out cheap, they will continue to be an ever more impotent and now even ignored faction of the party.

---------------------

Postcript: According to Andrew Sullivan writing in the Daily Dish at the Atlantic.com ( link HERE), it would appear that we evangelicals sold out cheaper than we realized:

She opposes same-sex marriage, but she has stated that she has gay friends and is receptive to gay and lesbian concerns about discrimination.^[9] While the previous administration did not implement same-sex benefits, Palin complied with a state Supreme Court order and signed them into law.^[28] She disagreed with the Supreme Court ruling^[29] and supported a democratic advisory vote from the public on whether there should be a constitutional amendment on the matter.^[30] Alaska was one of the first U.S. states to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage, in 1998, along with Hawaii.^[31] Palin has stated that she supported the 1998 constitutional amendment.^[9]

Palin's first veto was used to block legislation that would have barred the state from granting benefits to the partners of gay state employees. In effect, her veto granted State of Alaska benefits to same-sex couples. The veto occurred after Palin consulted with Alaska's attorney general on the constitutionality of the legislation.^[29]

Billionaire Gay Dem Declares "Battle for The Soul of the GOP"

2008-08-28T14:01:00.007-05:00

Catholic News Agency ^ | 8/26/08

Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 9:19:07 AM by marshmallow

Denver, Aug 25, 2008 / 11:51 pm (CNA).- Tim Gill, a billionaire from Colorado who has funded homosexual activism throughout the United States, spoke at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) Delegates Caucus at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, outlining how he has worked to advance homosexual causes in U.S. politics. Gill endorsed undermining rising politicians critical of homosexual advocacy by targeting donations to benefit their opponents on the state level.

Gill, who was introduced at the caucus as one of the nation’s largest funders of LGBT “civil rights initiatives,” reportedly has spent $150 million on LGBT issues. He is the former CEO of the software publishing company Quark, Inc. and is also the founder of the Gill Action Fund, a major backer of homosexual political candidates and causes.

“Every single advance for gay rights has come at the state level,” Gill said, saying the most important thing the Democratic LGBT delegates could do is “go back and support those pro-gay state legislators, and eliminate the anti-gay state legislators.”

He encouraged the delegates to donate to state candidates out of state, especially in rural areas.

The billionaire homosexual activist also counseled the audience not to donate to unwinnable races, but rather to focus their donations where they will most likely change the outcome of elections.

“Just a little bit of money goes a long way,” he said.

If all the LGBT delegates donated fifty dollars to specially targeted races, which he numbered at no more than ten or twenty per election year, Gill said “we can get rid of them.”

By successfully changing Republican legislatures to Democratic ones, Gill claimed, “the net result is always good for gays.”

Though he was a Democrat speaking at the Democratic National Convention, Gill claimed he and the LGBT delegates were in a “battle for the soul of the Republican Party,” a party which he claimed was controlled by “a bunch of bigots.”

“The only way bigots are going to learn is if we take their power away from them,” he asserted.

He counseled the delegates to find the next Rick Santorum, the former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, and “end his career.”

Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, a Republican, who opposed homosexual causes, lost to the Democratic Sen. Robert Casey, Jr. in 2006. Gill took credit for helping bring about Santorum’s loss.

Organizers at the LGBT Caucus claimed as members at least 274 of the more than 4,000 DNC delegates attending the convention.

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See also: There Is A Gay Agenda Winning Elections ......

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/11/29/gay_millionaires/

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An interesting example of this can be found at The McCarville Report HERE:

Roth Raises $100,141, Murphy $64,050

By Michael McNutt/Capitol Bureau, The Oklahoman ~ Jim Roth (pictured) continues to lead in raising money for his bid to win a full six-year term on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, campaign reports show. Contributors include Tim Gill, a top gay and lesbian equal rights movement fundraiser, who gave the maximum donation of $5,000. Gill, an entrepreneur and software developer from Denver, was among those identified by state Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, as helping contribute $30 million in 2006 to local and state races to helpdefeat conservative candidates. Roth, the first openly gay person to hold a statewide office, is a Democrat appointed to the commission last year by Gov. Brad Henry. Roth, a former Oklahoma County commissioner, raised $100,141 during the first quarter of this year, according to his campaign committee's report filed with the state Ethics Commission. He had $112,482 at the start of the reporting period. He spent $44,298 during the reporting period from Jan. 1 through March 31, his reports show. He has $174,475 on hand. In addition to Gill, major contributors listed on Roth's report include Edmond attorney Reggie Whitten, Denver entrepreneur Jared Polis, and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., retiree James Stepp, $5,000 each; El Reno attorney Mark Henricksen, $3,000; and Ronald Ansin, a business executive from Harvard, Mass., $2,500.

California Federal Court Rejects Challenge to Federal Defense of Marriage Act

2008-08-27T10:52:00.001-05:00

ORANGE COUNTY, Calif., Aug. 27 /Standard Newswire/ -- During a court hearing yesterday, federal district court Judge David O. Carter announced that he is dismissing a last-ditch effort by "same-sex marriage" proponents to overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The case is Smelt v. Orange County, and it is one of the last remaining challenges to DOMA. Liberty Counsel intervened in this case on behalf of Campaign for California Families in 2004, in order to protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to defend DOMA.

The federal DOMA allows states to reject same-sex marriages from other states. The case began in 2004, when the same-sex marriage advocates claimed a right to same-sex marriage under the state and federal constitutions and also claimed that the DOMA was unconstitutional. The challenge to DOMA in this case was bizarre, because the statute only applies when one state refuses to accept the validity of an out-of-state, same-sex union. In Smelt, the same-sex pair who challenged DOMA had no legal, same-sex union from any state. In 2005, federal district court Judge Gary Taylor ruled that there was no fundamental right to same-sex marriage, and, since the plaintiffs had no legal same-sex union from any state, they could not challenge DOMA. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this ruling in 2006, dismissing the challenge. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

The case remained in suspension, pending resolution by the California Supreme Court regarding whether the state’s Proposition 22, which protected legitimate marriage, was constitutional. Following the ruling by the California Supreme Court on May 15, 2008, the plaintiffs in Smelt continued to press their case against the federal DOMA. However, Judge Carter has now dismissed both state law and DOMA claims.

Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, stated, "We are pleased that the federal Defense of Marriage Act still survives, but we cannot continue to hold our breath each time a judge considers the federal law. We are talking about marriage – the very foundation of society. We must have a permanent solution to protect traditional marriage. We must pass more state constitutional protections, and we must emblazon traditional marriage into the United States Constitution to stop activist judges from redefining marriage with a stroke of a pen."

British Marriage Registrar Wins Right Not to Handle Gay Marriages

2008-08-26T07:48:00.006-05:00

Lillian Ladele was threatened with the sack because of her beliefs on homosexuality.

Thursday, 10 July 2008

A Christian registrar from Islington who was bullied and threatened with the sack because of her religious beliefs on same sex unions has succeeded in her claims of unlawful discrimination by the council.

In its unanimous judgment, the employment tribunal found that Miss Lillian Ladele was directly discriminated against by Islington Council after she asked to be allowed not to perform civil partnership registrations.

Miss Ladele was supported by her Legal team, James Dingemans QC and Mark Jones of Ormerods solicitors. The case was financed by The Christian Institute’s Legal Defence Fund.

The highly significant ruling confirmed that the various acts of direct discrimination committed against Miss Ladele by Islington Council on the grounds of her religious belief included: failing to consider her for promotion; deciding to discipline her and threatening her with dismissal; concluding she had committed gross misconduct; failing to redress allegations that she was “homophobic” and labelling and treating her as homophobic; disregarding her concerns about her treatment; and failing to apply its anti-discrimination policies to gay colleagues who were mistreating her.

The tribunal also accepted that Islington Council had been able to deliver a “first-class” service to homosexual couples seeking civil partnerships, without Miss Ladele’s involvement. Therefore, the Council’s decision to require Miss Ladele to perform civil partnership registrations, contrary to her conscience, was an unlawful act of indirect religious discrimination.

The Council’s actions also amounted to unlawful harassment. The judgment found that the Council “disregarded and displayed no respect for Ms Ladele’s genuinely held religious belief,” and it created an “intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for her on grounds of her religion on belief.” (para.104 of the judgment).

In coming to their conclusion, the tribunal said, “It is an important case which may have a wider impact than the dispute between the parties.” (para.53 of the judgment).

Reacting to the decision, Miss Ladele said: “I am delighted at this decision. It is a victory for religious liberty, not just for myself but for others in a similar position to mine. Gay rights should not be used as an excuse to bully and harass people over their religious beliefs.”

The case was financed by The Christian Institute. Its Head of Communications, Mike Judge, said: “This important ruling confirms that gay rights should not be treated as trumping religious rights. The law clearly recognises this.

“If we really believe in equality before the law, that means respecting people who have sincerely held religious beliefs on sexual ethics. The witch hunt against those who disagree with homosexual practice has to stop.”

Mark Jones, solicitor for Miss Ladele, said: “Hopefully this decision will encourage other employers to balance competing rights where they conflict. In standing up for her faith, Lillian Ladele found herself vilified by various people, including some holding themselves out as protectors of the rights and freedoms of others. She faced this with a quiet dignity.

“I hope that those who were quick to criticise Lillian - including those holding political and clerical office - will now swiftly express their support for her (and others like her) now she has been revealed as the victim, and not the perpetrator, of the discrimination they purport to oppose.”

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From the UK Christian Institute. Link to article HERE.
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A Classic Example of "Gay Tolerance"

2008-08-25T14:40:00.006-05:00

The following is a letter to the editor written by Crystal Dixon, a black, former employee of an Ohio University. I say "former" because she was fired for writing this article shortly after it was printed in the Toledo Free Press. Is this "tolerance?"

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Link to Article Toledo Free Press Article HERE:

GUEST OPINION

Gay rights and wrongs: another perspective
By Crystal Dixon

I read with great interest Michael Miller's April 6 column, "Gay Rights and Wrongs."

I respectfully submit a different perspective for Miller and Toledo Free Press readers to consider.

First, human beings, regardless of their choices in life, are of ultimate value to God and should be viewed the same by others. At the same time, one's personal choices lead to outcomes either positive or negative.

As a Black woman who happens to be an alumnus of the University of Toledo's Graduate School, an employee and business owner, I take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are "civil rights victims." Here's why. I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a Black woman. I am genetically and biologically a Black woman and very pleased to be so as my Creator intended. Daily, thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle evidenced by the growing population of PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex Gays) and Exodus International just to name a few. Frequently, the individuals report that the impetus to their change of heart and lifestyle was a transformative experience with God; a realization that their choice of same-sex practices wreaked havoc in their psychological and physical lives. Charlene E. Cothran, publisher of Venus Magazine, was an aggressive, strategic supporter of gay rights and a practicing lesbian for 29 years, before she renounced her sexuality and gave Jesus Christ stewardship of her life. The gay community vilified her angrily and withdrew financial support from her magazine, upon her announcement that she was leaving the lesbian lifestyle. Rev. Carla Thomas Royster, a highly respected New Jersey educator and founder and pastor of Blessed Redeemer Church in Burlington, NJ, married to husband Mark with two sons, bravely exposed her previous life as a lesbian in a tell-all book. When asked why she wrote the book, she responded "to set people free... I finally obeyed God."

Economic data is irrefutable: The normative statistics for a homosexual in the USA include a Bachelor's degree: For gay men, the median household income is $83,000/yr. (Gay singles $62,000; gay couples living together $130,000), almost 80% above the median U.S. household income of $46,326, per census data. For lesbians, the median household income is $80,000/yr. (Lesbian singles $52,000; Lesbian couples living together $96,000); 36% of lesbians reported household incomes in excess of $100,000/yr. Compare that to the median income of the non-college educated Black male of $30,539. The data speaks for itself.

The reference to the alleged benefits disparity at the University of Toledo was rather misleading. When the University of Toledo and former Medical University of Ohio merged, both entities had multiple contracts for different benefit plans at substantially different employee cost sharing levels. To suggest that homosexual employees on one campus are being denied benefits avoids the fact that ALL employees across the two campuses regardless of their sexual orientation, have different benefit plans. The university is working diligently to address this issue in a reasonable and cost-efficient manner, for all employees, not just one segment.

My final and most important point. There is a divine order. God created human kind male and female (Genesis 1:27). God created humans with an inalienable right to choose. There are consequences for each of our choices, including those who violate God's divine order. It is base human nature to revolt and become indignant when the world or even God Himself, disagrees with our choice that violates His divine order. Jesus Christ loves the sinner but hates the sin (John 8:1-11.) Daily, Jesus Christ is radically transforming the lives of both straight and gay folks and bringing them into a life of wholeness: spiritually, psychologically, physically and even economically. That is the ultimate right.

Tolerance is not enough.

2008-08-24T06:25:00.010-05:00

A few weeks ago, Oklahoma County District Court Judge Bill Graves was "reassigned" to duties not usually assigned to a full District Court Judge. The speculation both in Oklahoma and nationally has been that he is being punished for his public opposition to new proposed "gay friendly" Oklahoma Bar Association Rules for Judicial Conduct. These ABA sponsored proposed rules make even a perceived unpleasant facial expression when gays are mentioned misconduct.

The argument being made by gays is that gays just want to be treated like everyone else ... even though they define themselves as being entirely different from most of us. But, inside the gay movement the goals are much more ambitious and the argument is about much, much more that tolerance. It is about making the majority population accept, approve of and encourage their behavior. The following is taken from a recent article by Dr. Josh Corvino, a nationally recognized gay spokesman who is a professor at Wayne State University: (Link HERE)

.... Roughly, “tolerance” involves leaving people alone to live as they choose, even when you don’t approve, whereas acceptance involves somehow affirming their choices. But even “acceptance” seems too weak here. Acceptance sounds close to acquiescence, which is scarcely distinguishable from tolerance. Gay people don’t want merely to be tolerated or accepted, we want to be embraced and encouraged—like everyone else in society.
The shift from tolerance to acceptance is apparent in the movement’s goals. When I came out in the late 1980’s, we were still fighting to make gay sex legal. As late as 2003, homosexual sodomy was criminal in over a dozen states. That’s when the U.S. Supreme Court finally declared sodomy laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas, overturning Bowers v. Hardwick. Suddenly, tolerance was legally mandated.

Then things changed—rapidly.

Just a few months later, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts declared the state’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Gays and lesbian Americans began legally marrying the following year, and marriage became the predominant gay-rights issue in this country. Now California’s doing it (despite the threat of an amendment overturning that decision), and a handful of other states have civil unions or domestic partnerships.

Legally speaking, when it comes to marriage, “tolerance” may be enough. A marriage is legal whether people approve of it or not. Socially speaking, however, marriage requires more.
.... Obviously, not everyone will approve of everyone else’s marriage. You politely applaud at a wedding even if you think the groom is a jerk. But the ideal is still one where others’ participation is crucial. I’ve even been to wedding ceremonies—straight and gay—where the minister turns during the vows and asks, “Do you pledge to support Whosie and Whatsit in their marriage?” and the audience responds “We do!”
That’s one reason why same-sex marriage is so contentious. We are not simply asking people to “tolerate” something we do “in the privacy of our bedrooms.” We are asking them to support and encourage something we do publicly. We are asking them, in effect, to participate.

The late Dr. D. James Kennedy explained this phenomenon shortly before his death in an article in the Christian Post: (Link HERE )

Tolerance is being willing to put up with, endure, and bear with those whose views or lifestyles are different from others’ views, without agreeing with them. Every Christian should be tolerant in the correct and historical meaning of that word. It is what the Bible means in the love chapter of I Corinthians 13: “Love endureth all things.” Every Christian should be tolerant.
However, if you think that is what is being taught in the curricula of this country, you are very mistaken, as Josh McDowell points out in his book, The New Tolerance, which is the principal source of research for this message.
The “new tolerance” means: Not only do you put up with and endure and bear with those who have different views, habits, and/or lifestyles than your own, but you agree with their views as well.
Furthermore, you hold that their lifestyle is equally true and equally valid as your own and, therefore, there is no possible way that you could be intolerant, because there is nothing to be intolerant of. You must even be willing to promote and endorse that other lifestyle, since it is every bit as good as yours.
We have even invented a new post-modern civil right—the civil right for my feelings not to be hurt. For example, a young lady in one of the high schools recently sued because they sang a patriotic song that had some religious words in it. She said that it hurt her “feelings.”
Tolerance is the last virtue of a depraved society. When you have an immoral society that has blatantly, proudly, violated all of the commandments of God, there is one last virtue they insist upon: tolerance for their immorality. They will not have you condemning what they have done as being wrong, and they have created a belief system in which it is not, and in which they are no longer the criminal or the villain or the evil person, but you are!

Which brings us back to Judge Bill Graves, a committed Christian and long time conservative Oklahoma legislator. He simply exercised his legal rights as an influential member of the Oklahoma Bar to voice his disapproval of a new set of rules which would make it difficult or impossible for traditional Christians like himself to become judges or even remain on the bench. The result, he was effectively demoted. And, like the California court system employees who told their employers that their faith would not allow them to conduct gay marriages or participate in them, he found that long held constitutional protections of religious faith in the United States no longer apply if your faith disapproves of homosexuality.

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Further examples of the new "tolerance:"

California: Christian MD's have no constitutional right to abstain from providing elective fertility treatment to gays wishing to have children

Texas: Christian Pharmacists fired for refusing to dispense abortion pill

Iowa: Christian employee fired for objecting to participation in diversity training which celebrated homosexuality

California: Christian HP employee fired for "anti-gay" Bible verses on desk

New York: Kodak fires man over objections to pro-gay diversity training

Ohio: Black university employee fired over newspaper column objecting to comparisons of gay agenda and civil rights struggle for blacks

California: Red Cross employee fired for refusing to celebrate "Gay and Lesbian Pride Month."

Canada: Christian officials told to resign if they object to performing gay marriages, other ....

New Mexico: Christian owned photography studio fined for refusing to photograph "gay wedding."

Massachusetts: Cape Cod officials report rash of (mostly gay) public sex acts on beaches

Florida: Protesting Pastors jailed at homosexual festival

Kansas: City of Wichita sued for arresting pastor on sidewalk near gay event

Missouri: FBI refuses to protect Baptist church after gay threats

Sweden: Pentecostal Pastor jailed for "anti-gay" sermon

Canada: Christian printer fined for refusing to print gay gay propaganda

Canada: Christian teacher suspended for "anti-gay" letters to editor

A Neighborhood Too Far?

2008-08-17T05:26:00.015-05:00

"I think we may be going a bridge to far."

Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery

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For the past several decades, Tulsa City Government has been dominated by an oligarchy of old money families and wealthy special interests. They have given the Citizens of Tulsa an increasingly corrupt city-county government, the tenth worst streets in the nation, a staggering street crime rate, some of the highest sales tax rates in the nation and a series of grandiose civic "improvement projects" that the city simply cannot afford.

For reasons that are only now becoming apparent, it would appear that this oligarchy is taking aim at a particular neighborhood in a classic dump and pump, systematically dumping city "problems" in one neighborhood so that they can pump the value of their holdings in another. This is not a new strategy in Tulsa. Ask some of the folks who used to own homes and businesses around 61st and Peoria.

The first sign that something was wrong came when city code enforcement began very strict scrutiny along Admiral Boulevard between roughly Harvard and Yale. Businesses that had been located there for decades, particularly used car lots, found it advisable to move elsewhere or face the constant, costly attention of nit picking code inspectors. Within a year, Admiral Boulevard became a ghost town between Harvard and Yale as one small, marginal business after the other closed up leaving an empty lot and/or building. Soon, long time neighborhood businesses like area diners began closing as well.

The next sign of trouble afoot was the stunning ouster of Bell's Amusement Park from the County Fairgrounds. Bell's Amusement Park was a city landmark. In a procedural move that would have made Machiavelli proud, Bell's was ousted from the fairgrounds and replaced with a parking lot. The move made no sense at all, unless you were familiar with what now appears to be "the plan."

Next, Driller's Stadium came under the gun. Built in 1981 and renovated in the 1990's, Driller's Stadium is the largest park in the Texas League and consistently rated as one of the best. It is in excellent repair and should be useful for several more decades. Moving the Drillers out of Driller's Stadium, again simply makes no sense, unless there are reasons that the rest of us don't know about.

The reasons for all of the above may have become apparent when it was announced that a hundred plus capacity homeless shelter was being planned for Admiral and Yale. There was no discussion, no referendum, just an announcement that it as going to happen regardless of community outrage. Stunned area homeowners, already reeling from hit after hit to their neighborhood, were furious.

But, after the anger subsided a little, the obvious question became, "Why here and why us?" The answer is actually fairly simple. The oligarchy is heavily invested in downtown real estate and stands to make the next generation's fortune from the gentrification of currently depressed downtown and near downtown properties. The presence of social services and facilities for the poor and homeless are incompatible with these gentrification plans since the limousine liberals who typically frequent trendy downtown lofts and entertainment venues prefer that someone else live with these neighborhood challenges.

Given this, "the plan" becomes perfectly clear once you look at a map of the city. Where can you place these homeless people and their attendant services without depressing the property values of the oligarchy and still keep them within a close bus ride of health services in the 11th to 21st and Utica corridor and city and state services which are downtown and really cannot be moved such as DHS, etc.? And, how can you do this in such a way as to appear racially sensitive?

The answer lies in an area bounded by Admiral Boulevard on the north, Yale on the west, Twenty First Street on the South and Sheridan on the East. This area is within three miles or so of the hospital corridor and five or so from downtown. A fairly short bus ride in other words. It gives a five mile "buffer" from the downtown gentrified properties, a two mile buffer from the aging but still viable Forty First and Yale shopping area and even a one mile buffer from TU. And, the area is a moderate income mostly white neighborhood, so the oligarchy cannot be accused of being racially insensitive by dumping their problems on North Tulsa ..... again.

There were a couple of problems, however. What to do about the people who lived and worked in that area? A lot of the businesses were encouraged to leave by city code enforcement. That took care of many of the small businessmen who would have opposed "the plan."

The residents were a much more difficult problem. White City and the surrounding area was a great neighborhood ten years ago. There was an excellent mix of home sizes and prices. It's residents were an interesting mixture of TU students and faculty, downtown workers and older, long time residents, in short the kind of socio-economic mix that social planners can only dream about. It had some of the best family entertainment in the region. Driller's Stadium, Bell's Amusement Park and Big Splash were all within a mile. Admiral was a little rough at night but OK in the daytime and there were even a couple of old fashioned neighborhood diners where you could breakfast or lunch safely with your neighbors and friends. For more intellectual tastes, there was always a lecture, a recital or a performance going on at TU. And if you were a knowledge worker, the research assets of TU library system were readily available free if you are an alumni or for a small fee if you are not. Again, the kind of neighborhood that competent city planners try to duplicate rather than destroy.

Why would anyone leave a neighborhood like that, especially when it was affordable? They wouldn't unless you take away the amenities. As previously noted, a lot of the Admiral businessmen were persuaded to move elsewhere by code enforcement. The Drillers have been "persuaded" to leave. Bell's was simply not allowed to renew their lease. And, even Big Splash is apparently not making much capital investment in their operation from repairs to even the rent. TU has become extremely inaccessible, looking more and more like a huge gated apartment complex than the open and accessible community asset it once was. And now, by introduction of the homeless shelter, the last two benefits of the neighborhood, property values and relative safety, are being taken.

If you view "the plan" from the oligarchy's viewpoint everyone wins ... almost. Downtown interests get rid of a large portion of their homeless problem, or at least they think they will. A very good argument can be made that homeless people congregate downtown for entirely different reasons that will not be changed by this move. All of the surrounding community assets "that matter" like TU and Promenade have been taken into consideration. The only losers are about twenty thousand mostly white homeowners whose neighborhoods will be ruined and whose home equity will be wiped out. To the oligarchy that is a small price to pay for "social progress," ... especially since they don't have to pay it.

The real question becomes however, who else will pay the price? There are always repercussions. Randi Miller has already paid for the Bell's debacle with her county commission seat and if Sally Bell (of the Bell's Amusement Park family) can beat aging anchorette Karen Keith in the general election the Tulsa County Commission may never be the same. And, Bell may well win. She has near fanatical support in the White City neighborhood.

District Four City Counselor Eric Gomez will pay with his seat as well. The Admiral and Yale announcement and his handling of it reduced him to the ranks of the political walking dead. I don't think there is enough money in Tulsa to buy him another term in office. He might survive the recall but even that is iffy. But, he will certainly not be reelected and the city counsel can rest assured that someone from the White City resistance movement will be the next counselor from that district.

District Three City Counselor David Patrick's seat is on the line as well, with David Bell of the Maxwell Park Neighborhood Association leading the charge to have Patrick ousted for his part in what is now becoming the Admiral and Yale debacle.

The oligarchy may have over-reached. The Tulsa City Council will change because of what has happened. There will be loud voices of opposition there after this. The Tulsa County Commission may change. If Sally Bell is elected, while she may not be able to do much with one vote, she can tell the public what is happening, and that in itself will be a major factor in future county government decisions.

Citizens from all over the city are watching the White City developments very closely because what is happening there could happen to them next. It could be that the Admiral and Yale project was a political blunder of Titanic proportions. The combination of procedural high handedness and patronizing arrogance in this situation may be the tipping point that triggers the political rage necessary for there to be a real change in Tulsa City and County Government. And, if that is the case, then it would appear that the Admiral and Yale project was a neighborhood too far.

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Editors Note: The name "White City" was probably taken from the old White City Dairy which was once located in the neighborhood. Despite recent snide PC remarks to the contrary, racial considerations had no part in the naming of the neighborhood.

They might kill fewer Jews ....

2008-08-15T07:59:00.009-05:00

This morning, I have listened in amazement as local talk radio station KFAQ listeners, who are self identified Republicans, lined up one after the other to testify that they would vote for John McCain even if he chose a pro-choice VP candidate.

Voting for John McCain is problem enough. John McCain is the slacker son of a powerful admiral who would probably have been RIF'd early in his military career were it not for his powerful father. He was a terrible student at Annapolis and has an un-denied reputation for partying and philandering both throughout his military career and later on the Hill. There are two or more unexplained airplane crashes in his record that would have destroyed another pilots career, including one where we has flying a naval aircraft to attend a football game! He divorced his crippled wife who stayed with him throughout his Viet Nam captivity and traded her in for new model, fifteen years his junior, who just happened to be the heir to a beer and liquor fortune. If he were anyone but one of America's political and social elite, he would be jokingly called the living example of a sailors dream, married to a sexy woman whose father owns a liquor store. But, he is instead, running for president of the United States.

To expect much in the way of moral discernment from a man like John McCain is to expect too much. But, a little grudging respect for the evangelical wing of the GOP would have been nice. But, he has refused to give even that. He has stiff armed evangelical leaders like James Dobson and done everything in his power to destroy the faith based coalition that has been the most loyal voter block for past two decades. And now, to add insult to injury, he is floating trial balloons about a VP choice who is openly and completely pro-abortion.

I listened to KFAQ listeners give excuse after excuse. The most common was that McCain and whoever he picks for VP are the lesser of evils. There is a problem with this reasoning however. The lesser of evils is still evil and that philosophy allows evil to set the agenda. Further, it requires the voter/supporter to personally participate in the evil rather than simply observe it on the other side of the political aisle.

The second most common excuse was the GOP has to do whatever it takes to retain the White House. This is another way of saying the end justifies the means. The GOP has some experience with this type of thinking. Richard Nixon was a master of it and it gave us Jimmy Carter. But, even more important than the political outcome is the moral outcome of such a philosophy. Where does that policy end? Just how much would GOP loyalists be willing to tolerate to retain power?

In the 1920's and early 1930's, the Germans and Italians were faced with a similar problem. Their economies were a disaster, a communist take over of both countries was entirely possible, the Versailles treaty had reduced Germany to military impotence. The very fabric of both nations was being destroyed.

These nations chose what they perceived to be the lesser of evils. Hitler and Mussolini made things happen. Mussolini made the trains run on time. Hitler stopped the communists in their tracks. The economy of both nations boomed. Within a few years, they were regaining territory and world power. But, the German and Italian people were paying a price. Their nations were becoming morally corrupt and their legal systems were being subordinated by pragmatic short term political concerns.

Hitler's and to a lesser extent Mussolini's treatment of Jews should have been a warning that something was terribly wrong. Officially tolerated injustice is a cancer on nation's soul that will kill it if it is not removed. But, like a miner who doesn't pay attention to the canary that quits singing, the Germans and Italians, happy with their jobs, their improved economy and their restored world position, decided that the deaths of a few socially unacceptable people was small price to pay for what they were receiving in return. And, it worked for a little less than a decade. But, by the middle of the second decade, Germany and Italy lay in smoking ruins.

Voting for John McCain ticket on the grounds that he might reduce the number of abortions with his judicial picks is political naivety of the first order. The majority justices who decided Roe v. Wade and every crazy abortion decision since were GOP nominees. If allowed to serve in the in White House, McCain will do exactly what he is doing right now ... ignoring the better moral lights of his nation and doing precisely what he has to to stay in power. It is a morally contradictory position that can do nothing but move the agenda of both parties farther and farther away from principled leadership. Voting for a moderately pro-choice or mixed pro-choice ticket today is the moral equivalent of a 1930's German voting for a moderate Nazi ticket because, if elected, they might kill fewer Jews.

The White City Blues

2008-08-14T07:21:00.003-05:00

The following is making the rounds on the Internet. Every good revolution needs a theme song. Maybe White City has found theirs:

>THE WHITE CITY BLUES
>
>Rich people spending lots of money
>To make everything nice downtown
>And the one thing they sure don’t want to see
>Is a bunch of bums hanging around
>
>So they sent ‘em to us
>And gave us The White City blues
>The bums get out of downtown
>Out of rich folks sight
>White City blues
>
>The old county sheriff’s
>Would run the bums out of town
>Now I can’t see much difference
>Between that and what these folks are puttin’ down
>
>The only difference is
>The White City blues
>Cause they’re not runnin’ ‘em to the county line
>But just out to our neighborhood
>Oh Yeah - White City blues
>
>I ain’t got nothing against them bums
>Lord knows they’re just folks like us
>But dumpin’ in our backyards
>Ain’t gonna do nothin’ but raise a fuss.
>
>And give us all the blues
>The White City blues
>The I’m poor now too cause nobody will buy my house
>Cause the neighborhood’s gone to hell
>White City Blues
>
>Now if this bill of goods these folks are sellin’
>Is gonna be so good for the neighborhood
>Why don’t they build it in their own back yard
>Oh Lord I wish they would.
>
>And leave us alone
>With the old White City Blues
>The hard enough as it was
>Without downtown’s rich folks problems too
>White City blues.

What Have YOU Done For YOUR Community?

2008-08-13T12:03:00.006-05:00

Yesterday's Tulsa Housing Authority meeting concerning the location of a homeless shelter in the Admiral and Yale area generated a lot of interesting conversation . As I think about it, it would have been fascinating to see a one on one debate between one of the participants on each side of the argument.

IMAGINE for a moment that Wanda Watson and Ruth Kaiser Nelson agreed to a one on one presidential campaign style debate. Wanda Watson is a nationally known blues singer with a voice like Janis Joplin and a deep passion for protecting her neighborhood. Ruth Kaiser Nelson is from one of Tulsa's wealthiest families and is known for her philanthropy.

IMAGINE that the moderator asked the representatives the following question: "What have you done for your community?"

IMAGINE that Wanda Watson answered: "I bought a home in a neighborhood I could afford. I took a chance on a marginal neighborhood. I paid my taxes, mowed my lawn, painted my house, worked with my neighbors and tried to be a stable and positive influence in a neighborhood that needs it badly."

IMAGINE that Ruth Kaiser Nelson answered: "I donated a million dollars to keep a homeless shelter away from my neighborhood and put it in HERS."

Now who would be the real philanthropist in that exchange? Ruth Kaiser Nelson's lifestyle will not change no matter how much money she donates to make the Admiral and Yale shelter a reality. She is giving discretionary funds in a way that just happens to serve the business and property interests of a lot of people like her. And, if things get too unpleasant in Tulsa for her, she can always jet away to Colorado or Newport or Palm Springs.

Wanda Watson on the other hand has donated not just a huge percentage of her non-discretionary net worth but also her presence, her influence and her sweat, literally her life. There is no comparison between the two. Wanda Watson's lifestyle will change radically because of what is happening at Admiral and Yale. If things turn bad in her Tulsa, she will just have to live with whatever situation the Ruth Kaiser Nelson's have created for her.

It is not philanthropy when you donate money you will not miss to take everything a less advantaged person has.

-------------------------

1 Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,

2 to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.

3 What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches?

Isaiah 10:1-3

It'll be a cold day in hell before I set one foot in the BOK Center ...

2008-08-12T13:00:00.011-05:00

I have just returned from a meeting of the Tulsa Housing Authority concerning the planned construction of a large low rent housing facility near Admiral and Yale. Downtown property owners are making a full court press right now to move the homeless and semi-homeless out of downtown to make the area around the new BOK Center more attractive. The proposed facility will house nearly a hundred low income individuals most of whom currently live at the downtown YMCA. Many of them are disabled, including substance abuse problems or mental health issues. The effect on property values and quality of life in the neighborhoods surrounding the proposed new facility will be devastating.

Literally hundreds of people from the nearby neighborhoods tried to attend the meeting. I say tried because when I arrived at a few minutes before the 10:00 a.m., the woefully inadequate meeting room was already completely full. By the time most people from the neighborhood arrived, they were being turned away by the eight or more armed security guards on the grounds that fire code would not allow more people in the building.

Not surprisingly, the people supporting the proposition, who also scheduled the meeting, showed up early and were able to schedule seventeen speakers in favor the proposition. They had also planted their supporters in different areas all over the room so that it would appear to a television camera that applause and support was coming from the audience when in fact most of the audience was completely silent after each speaker supporting the proposition.

On the other hand, many of the the neighborhood representatives who showed up on time were denied entrance to the building altogether. Consequently, they had no opportunity to even get access to the request forms to ask to be allowed to speak. Only thirteen people were allowed to speak for the neighborhood.

The time was supposed to be limited to thirty minutes for each side. I suppose someone's watch was running slow however because the speakers for the proposition began a little after 10:30 and were not finished until 11:15. I left before the speakers for the neighborhood were finished so I don't know if they were given equal time or not.

The mood of the crowd was polite but angry. Some of the people opposing the proposition were quite eloquent. Others were simply angry. One angry lady put it best, "You just don't dump poor people on poor people. All you get are a lot more poor people. It's a hard job now trying to keep our houses and neighborhoods clean and safe. This is going to make it impossible."

Anger aside, Roscoe Turner, ever the professional, pointed out that there were multiple questionable issues concerning the whole proposition. According to Turner, the zoning itself needs to be examined as well as the address listed for the project which he says does not exist.

The class distinction between the people supporting the project and the people opposing it was striking. Almost all of the people supporting the project are professionals or wealthy donors. There are no such facilities located in THEIR neighborhoods. When one was planned at 10th and Utica, the homeowners there killed it. On the other hand, most of the people opposing the project don't have a lot of options. Everything they have is tied up in their home and any reduction in its value will simply mean that they have to live with the consequences or let it be foreclosed since nobody in his right mind is going to buy a home near a homeless shelter.

In effect, the people with money to live in a neighborhood without this type of facility are telling the people who live in White City, Turner Park and the surrounding neighborhoods, that they will just have to live with this problem and take the resulting financial hit as well. Ruth Kaiser Nelson, one of the wealthy donors who sponsored this project, readily admitted in earlier media statements, "Nobody would want this in their neighborhood." Wanda Watson, a nationally known blues singer and resident of the neighborhood put it another way. Pointing her finger at the seated officials she asked bluntly, "Would you want this in your neighborhood?" There was total silence. She then said, "Yes or No. Would you?" The answer was apparently no.

The sheer arrogance of these people is stunning. They may actually succeed in getting the facility built. But, it will not be the wealthy donors running for election next time around. There was recall talk all over the room. Every city councilman who supported this project will hear about it again and the odds of District 4 Councilman Eric Gomez getting re-elected are astronomical.

As a matter of fact, it would probably be a good idea if Gomez stayed out of sight in his district for a while. There are about twenty thousand people in the affected neighborhoods and given the turnout at today's meeting, I would estimate that about ten thousand of them are hopping mad at Mayor Kathy Taylor, Ruth Kaiser Nelson, the City Council and anyone else remotely associated with this project. This is the type of political affront that does not go away and somebody, probably the elected officials and city employees who made it possible, will pay the price.

But, there will be a longer term price to pay as well. One woman observed, "This is not America." These people are shaken. As long they live, they will remember that their city government and a group of wealthy do-gooders ruined their neighborhood, stole the equity in their property and left them with a home that they could neither live in safely nor sell. Just how this anger, hurt, disappointment and disillusionment will manifest itself over the next several years is anybody's guess but one thing is for sure, downtown interests are taking a public relations and political hit that will take generations to repair. As one little lady from the neighborhood said loudly, "It'll be a cold day in hell before I set one foot in the BOK Center after this."

To do what ought not to be done ...

2008-08-07T06:06:00.007-05:00

The state editor for Blog Net News Oklahoma recently opined:

First of all, there is no such thing as "Judeo-Christian values." That's a phrase made up by certain Christians who want to feel better about thrusting their supposed moral superiority on the world. They throw "Judeo" into their "values" so as not to seem exclusivist. The truth is that the phrase "Judeo-Christian Values" is code for homophobia and religious discrimination.

He then continues to spew truly hateful speech about citizens who hold traditional Christian values for several more paragraphs. The rhetoric is so inflammatory that were the situations reversed and a Christian public official uttered it, they might be demoted from their position or hounded from public office.

But, it is the sheer ignorance of this statement that astounds me most. To say that there is no such thing as Judaeo Christian values is to display such profound ignorance of history, western culture and the law that only a quasi-Marxist, post modern university could have produced it. This level of ignorance cannot be produced by simply a lack of learning but must instead be instilled by such rebellion against the very nature of fact and reason that it blinds the hearer to the reality surrounding them.

At the time of the American Revolution, the English Common Law was already the law of the land. It was the law of the courts of the Colonies and most of the states have adopted it in one form or another as has Oklahoma in 12 O.S. 2002 as explained by the Oklahoma Supreme Court here: "The common law supplements our statutes. It remains in full force unless it is clearly and expressly modified or abrogated by our constitution or by statute."2 Silver v. Slusher 1988 OK 53. This of course begs the question, what was/is the English Common Law? At the time of the revolution and for a hundred years thereafter, the most authoritative text on the English Common Law was Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England which states:

MAN, confidered as a creature, muft neceffarily be fubject to the laws of his creator, for he is entirely a dependent being. A being, independent of any other, has no rule to purfue, but fuch as he prefcribes to himfelf; but a ftate of dependance will inevitably oblige the inferior to take the will of him, on whom he depends, as the rule of his conduct: not indeed in every particular, but in all thofe points wherein his dependance confifts. This principle therefore has more or lefs extent and effect, in proportion as the fuperiority of the one and the dependance of the other is greater or lefs, abfolute or limited. And confequently as man depends abfolutely upon his maker for every thing, it is neceffary that he fhould in all points conform to his maker's will. This will of his maker is called the law of nature...

THIS law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himfelf, is of courfe fuperior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and fuch of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.

This natural law has been with us in codified form since at least the time of Moses. Justinian recognized it, " The laws of nature, which all nations observe alike, being established by a divine providence, remain ever fixed and immutable."

From Roman times through the Middle Ages and beyond, the natural law remained as civilizations rose and crumbled. "This true law is diffused among all men, is immutable and eternal. To replace it with a contrary law is a sacrilege" (Cicero). This "divine and natural" law and is expressed in the Ten Commandments. The law is "natural" because reason (which decrees it) belongs to human nature. "These rules are written in the book of that light which we call truth and are imprinted on the heart of man as a seal upon wax" (St. Augustine). "Natural law is the light of understanding placed in us by God through which we know what we must do and what we must avoid" (St. Augustine).

A thinking lawyer cannot read the books of the Mosaic law (the Torah) without smiling as he finds the elements of modern statutory law, everything from homicide to trespass and a lot in between. I used to preach a sermon where I compared passages from Leviticus and Deuteronomy to citations from the Oklahoma Statutes and let the congregation make up their own mind where the latter came from.

In the end, this profound, blinding ignorance and the hate that must surely follow it springs from the ultimate rebellion of man against not only his Maker but also against the very nature He created even to the nature of their own being. Unable to avoid the physical attributes of the natural law, they rail instead against its moral component, seeking to justify unnatural moral depravity by equally unnatural human law as is described by Scalia in his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas:

The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are “immoral and unacceptable,” Bowers, supra, at 196–the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity. Bowers held that this was a legitimate state interest. The Court today reaches the opposite conclusion. The Texas statute, it says, “furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual,” ante, at 18 (emphasis addded). The Court embraces instead Justice Stevens’ declaration in his Bowers dissent, that “the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice,” ante, at 17. This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation. If, as the Court asserts, the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none of the above-mentioned laws can survive rational-basis review.

And that is the goal of people such as this. Not to live quietly. Not to privately practice their "lifestyle choices" behind closed doors, but rather to overthrow by force of law the moral sentiments of the majority and then punish and ruin anyone who dares disagree with them. This is not freedom for a minority but rather oppression of the majority and there is a word for that, tyranny.

* * * * *

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. Romans 1:18-31.

In Memoriam: Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

2008-08-03T18:17:00.002-05:00

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died today in Moscow. He was 89. In a recent interview with Der Spiegel he said:

I am not afraid of death any more. When I was young the early death of my father cast a shadow over me -- he died at the age of 27 -- and I was afraid to die before all my literary plans came true. But between 30 and 40 years of age my attitude to death became quite calm and balanced. I feel it is a natural, but no means the final, milestone of one’s existence.

Nothing I could write could properly memorialize a mind and soul of his stature, so I will not try. Rather, I will record a passage from his monumental Gulag Archipelago that has stayed with me over the many years since I first read it:

Following an operation, I am lying in the surgical ward of a camp hospital. I cannot move. I am hot and feverish, but nonetheless my thoughts do not dissolve into delerium, and I am grateful to Dr. Boris Nikolayevich Kornfeld, who is sitting beside my cot and talking to me all evening. The light has been turned out, so it will not hurt my eyes. There is no one else in the ward.
Fervently he tells me the long story of his conversion from Judaism to Christianity. I am astonished at the conviction of the new convert, at the ardor of his words.
We know each other very slightly, and he was not the one responsible for my treatment, but there was simply no one here with whom he could share his feelings. He was a gentle and well-mannered person. I could see nothing bad in him, nor did I know anything bad about him. However, I was on guard because Kornfeld had now been living for two months inside the hospital barracks, without going outside. He had shut himself up in here, at his place of work, and avoided moving around camp at all.
This meant that he was afraid of having his throat cut. In our camp it had recently become fashionable to cut the throats of stool pigeons. This has an effect. But who could guarantee that only stoolies were getting their throats cut? One prisoner had had his throat cut in a clear case of settling a sordid grudge. Therefore the self-imprisonment of Kornfeld in the hospital did not necessarily prove that he was a stool pigeon.
It is already late. The whole hospital is asleep. Kornfeld is finishing his story:
"And on the whole, do you know, I have become convinced that there is no punishment that comes to us in this life on earth which is undeserved. Superficially it can have nothing to do with what we are guilty of in actual fact, but if you go over your life with a fine-tooth comb and ponder it deeply, you will always be able to hunt down that transgression of yours for which you have now received this blow."
I cannot see his face. Through the window come only the scattered reflections of the lights of the perimeter outside. The door from the corridor gleams in a yellow electrical glow. But there is such mystical knowledge in his voice that I shudder.
Those were the last words of Boris Kornfeld. Noiselessly he went into one of the nearby wards and there lay down to sleep. Everyone slept. There was no one with whom he could speak. I went off to sleep myself.
I was wakened in the morning by running about and tramping in the corridor; the orderlies were carrying Kornfeld's body to the operating room. He had been dealt eight blows on the skull with a plasterer's mallet while he slept. He died on the operating table, without regaining consciousness.
And so it happened that Kornfeld's prophetic words were his last words on earth, and those words lay upon me as an inheritance. You cannot brush off that kind of inheritance by shrugging your shoulders.
But by that time I myself had matured to similar thoughts. I would have been inclined to endow his words with the significance of a universal law of life. However, one can get all tangled up that way. One would have to admit that, on that basis, those who had received even crueler punishments than imprisonment,those who were shot or burned at the stake, were some sort of super-evildoers. And yet it is the the innocent who are punished most zealously. And what would one then have to say about our torturers? Why does fate not punish them? Why do they prosper?
The only solution to this would be that the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul. From that point of view our torturers have been punished most horribly of all: they are turning into swine; they are departing downward from humanity. From that point of view punishment is inflicted on those whose development . . . holds out hope.
But there was something in Kornfeld's last words that touched a sensitive chord, and that I completely accept for myself. And many will accept the same for themselves.
In the seventh year of my imprisonment I had gone over and re-examined my life and had come to understand why everything had happened to me: both prison and my malignant tumor. And I would not have murmured even if all that punishment had been considered inadequate.
I lay there a long time in that recovery room from which Kornfeld had gone forth to his death, and all alone during sleepless nights I pondered with astonishment my own life and the turns it had taken. Looking back, I saw that for my whole conscious life I had not understood either myself or my strivings. What had seemed for so long to be beneficial now turned out in actuality to be fatal, and I had been striving to go in the opposite direction to that which was truly necessary for me. But just as the waves of the sea knock the inexperienced swimmer off his feet and keep tossing him back onto the shore, so also was I painfully tossed back on dry land by the blows of misfortune. And it was only because of this that I was able to travel the path which I had always really wanted to travel.
It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhlemed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.
Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: they struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.

ME -- A LIBERAL ???????

2008-08-02T18:19:00.004-05:00

It never ceases to amaze me when I see my blog listed among the most influential LIBERAL blogs in Oklahoma. This situation is a perfect illustration of just how convoluted American politics have become. They say confession is good for the soul, so I am going to confess a few things to the blogosphere that may change their impression of my political leanings.

First, I am a constitutional originalist. That means that I do not believe in the “living document” theory of constitutional interpretation. I most closely identify myself with the jurisprudence of Justices Antonine Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Second, I am a hard core Evangelical activist and I am not ashamed of it. I am 100% pro-life, anti-porn and pro-traditional marriage only. And, I strongly support the First Amendment right of Christians to advance their world-view in the marketplace of ideas wherever they choose including the political system. But, I am ashamed to admit that my Christian brothers and sisters moved into the political system to change it but were instead changed by it, becoming what they beheld and selling their moral and spiritual birthright for crumbs from the table of the secular political elite.

Third, I am a highly dissatisfied Republican. The GOP has moved so far to the far left in my lifetime that I no longer recognize it. The current GOP position on any issue is always just perceptibly to the right of the Democrats regardless of the morality or practical effect of that position. That’s not leadership or conservatism. John Kennedy was far to the right of the current GOP on many issues. If there were an opportunity to do so in Oklahoma, I would probably vote the Constitution Party presidential candidate.

Fourth, I believe in a conspiratorial view of history. No other theory makes any sense. For example, in my view of history, Franklin D. Roosevelt was a socialist who surrounded himself by known Communists and Communist sympathizers.

Fifth, I am a realist. I oppose many key GOP initiatives like so-called “tort reform” because I know, because of my profession and personal experience, that they are trying to rig the game at the court house against the people who need help there the most, individuals and small businessmen who have been wronged by the rich and powerful.

The people who call themselves conservatives these days are pale imitations of the real thing. For the most part, they spout knee jerk political theory based on talk radio “education” and can't think past the next election cycle. I am proud to admit that I am out of step with them and the current GOP which calls itself “conservative” but is far, far to the left of the Democratic party of only a few decades ago. But, to call me a liberal is ridiculous. The problem is that I am so conservative that modern so-called "conservatives" don’t recognize true, old fashioned conservatism when they see it.

OBA General Counsel to Take Leave of Absence

2008-08-01T16:38:00.005-05:00

The Oklahoma Bar Association announced this afternoon that OBA General Counsel Dan Murdock has requested and been granted a leave of absence after DNA tests on the bite mark of an alleged sexual battery victim were found to be consistent with his DNA. Murdock has been formally charged with sexual battery. (Link to Daily Oklahoman news report HERE.) The Oklahoma Bar Association's press release on the matter follows. (Link to OBA press release HERE.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

OBA General Counsel to Take Leave of Absence

Association Explains Disciplinary Procedures

(OKLAHOMA CITY – Aug. 1) Oklahoma Bar Association General Counsel Dan Murdock has requested a leave of absence from his job until his personal legal issues have been resolved.

“In the case of a criminal investigation involving a lawyer,” said OBA President J. William Conger, “the Professional Responsibility Commission, which investigates allegations of lawyer misconduct, would typically wait for the outcome of a plea or conviction and then take appropriate action.”

OBA Executive Director John Morris Williams said, “At this point there is a criminal action pending with the district attorney’s office. Discipline against a lawyer brought about by a complaint at the bar association is a civil process to determine if an attorney has engaged in unethical or improper conduct that would affect his or her license to practice. These are two separate and distinct proceedings with different burdens of proof.”

Regarding Murdock’s license to practice law, Conger said, “There is a very fair and deliberate process to discipline attorneys who violate the rules of our profession. That process is also applicable to our general counsel if he has violated the rules. The general counsel has to follow the rules just like everyone else and will suffer the same consequences as anyone else if he has not.

“Mr. Murdock, like any other criminal defendant, should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.”

In the event that a grievance is filed against Murdock, the Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules Governing Disciplinary Proceedings provide for a commission made up of five lawyers and two non-lawyers to appoint a special counsel who would investigate and present the case if the grievance is determined to have merit.

If found to have merit, the case would be presented in front of a three-member panel that includes one non-lawyer. The recommendation of the panel is then sent to the Oklahoma Supreme Court for a final determination of discipline that could include disbarment.

“Normally grievances against a lawyer are handled by the general counsel’s office,” Conger said. “In this case because of the inherent conflict of interest, the attorneys and investigators in the Office of the General Counsel would not participate. That is why the Professional Responsibility Commission would handle this.”

###

The Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules Governing Disciplinary Proceedings are available at http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/Index.asp?ftdb=STOKRUDP.

More information about the Professional Responsibility Commission is available at http://www.okbar.org/members/gencounsel/PRC.htm.

Judge Bill Graves - Connect the Dots - Part II

2008-07-30T05:42:00.005-05:00

Many Oklahoma citizens unfamiliar with the culture war don't understand how a popularly elected Oklahoma judge could be demoted for simply exercising his constitutionally guaranteed First Amendment rights. The official position is that Judge Bill Graves was not demoted, but simply reassigned to other duties where he was needed more. This position asks the onlooking public to ignore three basic, undisputed facts: (1) that Judge Graves openly criticized an extremely controversial proposition of the Oklahoma Bar Association and the American Bar Association and (2) within weeks thereafter he was "reassigned" to duties that would cause most onlookers to conclude that he had been demoted (3) Judge Graves had over 24oo ongoing criminal cases on his docket when he was "reassigned," including several death penalty cases. The following blog entry (Link HERE) by New York Law School Professor (and gay rights activist) Arthur S. Leonard goes a long way in clarifying this otherwise inexplicable difference in perception between the publics questions and the official position:

Well, sitting judges raving about the "homosexual agenda" and decrying the attempt to curb their desire to enact their religious beliefs against homosexuality in their work would certainly merit the attention of the judicial disciplinary authorities in the jurisdiction where they sit, I would think. Judge Graves has now alerted the Oklahoma authorities of the need to monitor his decision-making with care in order to protect the due process rights of sexual and ethnic minority litigants who may come before him. Although he "covers" himself by saying, regarding "homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals", "Certainly, the three latter groups should be treated with courtesy, fairness and justice like anyone else," he also insists that the BBC, by its proposed rule, "is promoting the homosexual agenda which is to have homosexuality treated as normal and natural as heterosexuality."

Actually, this is a breath of fresh air, to have a judge who is obviously firmly anti-gay come forward and expose his views, including his accurate understanding of the "homosexual agenda." Yes, an accurate understanding, as gay liberationists have figured out that our sexual orientation is actually a normal and natural variant of human existence, and our "agenda" -- to the extent there is anything so formal -- is exactly that: to reverse centuries of demented propaganda against us by helping everybody to understand that we are folks whose differences from others are naturally occurring variations in human characteristics.

A word to the wise, though: every lawyer in Oklahoma should keep a copy of this letter in their files to use in support of a recusal motion in case they are appearing before Judge Graves in a case where they are representing one of the groups demeaned in the letter....
http://www.abajournal.com/news/judge_blasts_proposed_code_change_as_promoting_

That's blackmail. But, it is an officially tolerated form of blackmail. To understand just how far the animus toward traditional Christian values in the legal profession extends, you need go no further than the following editorial recently printed in The Oklahoma City Journal Record (Link HERE) the "official" legal newspaper of the state capitol:

(Snip) In an April 8 letter to the Oklahoma Bar Association concerning the adoption of the revised code, Oklahoma County District Court Judge Bill Graves vehemently objected to a provision calling for non- discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender, or ethnicity. Graves rails against the proposal as coming from the "liberal, pro- homosexual American Bar Association." Graves states that the current canons of ethics cover sexual orientation. He states "homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals ... should be treated with courtesy, fairness and justice like anyone else," which sounds good. But then the judge truly expresses himself by continuing that the OBA is "promoting the homosexual agenda which is to have homosexuality treated as normal and natural as heterosexuality." Graves opines that "the People of Oklahoma do not subscribe to the homosexual agenda."

Whether you agree with Graves or not, his public stance forces the question of whether somebody appearing in front of him might get a stiffer sentence or less judicial compassion because the judge thought the person was a promoter of the so-called liberal, homosexual agenda - or even the litigant's attorney, or the attorney's law firm. A parade of horribles is not hard to imagine. Should an officer of the ABA have his client appear with another attorney, or will Graves forgive the association with the liberal, pro-homosexual body? What if the attorney is gay, or the defendant is gay? Graves is, after all, telling the OBA that he does not feel he should be required to not discriminate, so is it not logical to assume that he might discriminate if given the opportunity?

Graves asserts that the code denies judges their First Amendment rights and is contrary to freedom of religion and the Bible, because there are "numerous Biblical references condemning homosexuality." Graves notes that even many non-Christians and atheists object to the "homosexual agenda." But homosexuality is not a crime and is not condemnable in Oklahoma. Graves ignores the fact that he affirmatively sought the office of district court judge. Perhaps if it is too much for him not to discriminate, he should resign. (Snip)

The writer's position is clear: devout, practicing Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons and Orthodox Jews are not welcome on the bench in Oklahoma unless they recant their faith. The circumstances surrounding Judge Bill Graves "reassignment" could cause the onlooking public to assume that this is also becoming the defacto if not dejure position of some Oklahoma courts.

Judge Bill Graves - Connect the Dots.

2008-07-28T11:42:00.004-05:00

In June of this year, Oklahoma City District Judge Bill Graves strongly criticized the Oklahoma Bar Association's attempt to enact the American Bar Association's new Code of Judicial Conduct. His opposition to the proposed changes in the Oklahoma Code of Judicial Conduct was reported in a copyrighted story by the AP (Link HERE) which stated:

District Judge Bill Graves wrote a letter to an Oklahoma Bar Association committee criticizing the suggested changes in the code. These changes are along the lines of wording in the American Bar Association code.

"These policies are not based on laws enacted by Congress or the State Legislature, but on proposals of the liberal, pro-homosexual American Bar Association," Graves said.

He specifically objects to a proposed rule prohibiting judges from holding membership in organizations that discriminate on the basis of race, age, sex, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity or sexual orientation."

Graves said the proposal promotes a "homosexual agenda which is to have homosexuality treated as normal and natural as heterosexuality. These are cultural, moral and political issues that should be reserved to the Legislative branch."

Recently, rumors began circulating that Judge Graves had been removed from his responsibilities as a District Court Judge and assigned to duties normally reserved for unelected Special Judges. Judge Grave's reassignment was reported today in the Daily Oklahoman (link HERE):

More than 2,400 criminal cases in Oklahoma County are about to be reassigned, thanks to a controversial order by the county's presiding judge.
District Judge Vicki Robertson shuffled some judicial assignments in a June 27 order.
The order — which goes into effect Aug. 1 — resulted in District Judge Bill Graves losing his criminal docket and being assigned to probate cases, a chore that had been handled by an appointed special judge.
Graves, who declined to comment on the move, had more than 2,400 cases on his docket in July, according to court records.
Those cases will be reassigned to the other six district judges handling criminal cases, according to Robertson's order.
Robertson said specialty dockets like drug and mental health courts have siphoned enough cases that the county does not need as many criminal judges.
"I just had to redistribute the caseload,” she told The Oklahoman recently.

Decision draws opposition

Robertson said she chose to reassign Graves, who made news recently for decrying the homosexual agenda in proposed rules governing judicial conduct, because he had the least seniority among the judges assigned to criminal cases. Robertson could not be reached for comment Friday, but her order has drawn opposition from all seven judges — including Graves — and the Oklahoma County Criminal Defense Lawyers

When I addressed the Oklahoma Bar Association Bench and Bar Committee on this issue this spring (Link to comments HERE and HERE), I warned them that this type of anti-Christian discrimination would occur as a result of the passage of the proposed rule changes:

I sincerely believe with all my heart, based upon my own personal experience, that that the new proposed code of judicial conduct will be used by some attorneys and organizations to first “shop” sitting judges and then shape judicial elections and thus establish a defacto , as applied, religious test for Oklahoma judges.

The question is straightforward. Will we use the power of the Oklahoma Bar Association to dictate the religious associations (or lack thereof) of the citizens who serve on our benches? I agree with Justice Joseph Story who said, “The rights of conscience are indeed beyond the reach of any human power. They are given by God and cannot be encroached upon by human authority … Our judges did not surrender their citizenship when they took the bench and are entitled to the same rights of conscience, association and free exercise of religion as any other citizen.
Our founding fathers recognized this problem and drafted strong protections into the language of the constitution. Article VI, Para. 3 of the United States Constitution is straightforward: “ … No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Article 1 § 2 of the Oklahoma Constitution is equally clear: “no religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights.”

It now appears that even legal opposition to the rule changes through the mandated OBA hearing process may be enough to get a Christian judge reassigned to duties usually reserved for his assistants.

This is truly frightening. Ten years ago when I was in law school, my ethics professor taught that any person who opposed gay rights should not be allowed to serve on the bench. That professor will soon become a part of the Oklahoma Bar Association committee which screens and selects the judicial candidates that you are allowed to vote for. At the time, many of us thought that that particular professor was a hopeless radical. But, given what has happened to Judge Graves, you have to wonder if there will be any way in the future for a practicing Catholic, Evangelical or Orthodox Jew to serve on the bench in Oklahoma.

An Open Letter to Corporation Commission Candidates

2008-07-27T09:57:00.005-05:00

Within the next several days, I intend to mail the following to every current candidate for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission:

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Dear Candidate:

As you may or may not know, several years ago, the Oklahoma Legislature allowed several Oklahoma Rural Electric Coops to "opt out" of regulation by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Many of the Oklahoma consumers served by these "opt out" REC's live in rural areas of the state with high poverty levels. These consumers, who could normally use the office of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to resolve complaints against an REC without charge, unfortunately have no such venue other than the courts. Practically speaking, if the are having a hard time paying their light bill they certainly can't afford a lawyer. Consequently, these consumers are often left without a remedy and must accept whatever decision the REC makes concerning their account and pay whatever the REC demands to restore service. Since the regulation of public utilities is one of the primary functions of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission:

(a) What do you think about this "opt out" privilege?
(b) Do you think that the Oklahoma consumers served by these "opt out" REC's are receiving their constitutionally guaranteed right to equal protection under the law?
(c) What would you do, if anything, about this situation if you were elected to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission?
(d) Would you support general legislation which requires all otherwise unregulated Oklahoma REC's to:
(1) Limit the total amount required to restore service to a consumer whose service has been terminated including late fees, service charges, disconnect and reconnect fees and deposits to no more than five times the amount past due?
(2) Limit the deposit required by the REC for so-called poor credit risk consumers to no more than two times the average monthly billing for that account?
(3) Require that when a billing dispute occurs, service shall be restored upon payment of the amount past due alone, exclusive of other fees, service charges and deposits until the billing dispute is resolved?
(4) Codify the otherwise legally recognized common law principles that an invoice or bill from an REC represents a legally binding contract upon the parties and any ambiguities shall be interpreted in favor of the non-drafting party?
(5) Require that if an e-billing system is used by the REC that all vital information concerning that account including collection notices, cut off notices, etc. be available through that system?
(6) Require REC's to: (a) accept bank to bank electronic payments from a consumer and (b) do so without charging a special fee?
(7) Require REC's to appoint an internal ombudsman who will give the consumer an opportunity to resolve billing disputes, work out payment plans, etc. before service can be terminated?

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Bill Kumpe
Attorney at Law
Member, Cookson Hills Electric Cooperative

Obama's Middle East Policy - A Recipe For Armegeddon

2008-07-27T09:20:00.005-05:00

I just finished listening to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on Meet the Press. I should say I tried to listen to him. For twenty years after I got out of the military, I sold computers. I spent a lot of time, when I wasn't actually working, in high priced, high level, psychologically oriented marketing classes. So, I tend to automatically tune out "marketing speak" as soon as I hear it. The real problem with Obama is that most of what he says is "marketing speak." It is intended to develop an atmosphere conducive to a favorable decision without containing anything substantive.

He did say one thing that caught my attention. He said in no uncertain terms that he was committed to the formation of a Palestinian state and the use of the authority of the United States to make it happen.

It is very easy for Americans, who have never heard a shot fired in anger, to dictate kumbyah peace terms to the Israeli's who have been in a constant state of war for their survival since the founding of their nation. American's just don't understand that the Palestinians, and a lot of other people in the Middle East, will not rest until the Israeli state is destroyed and every single living Jew on the planet is either dead or subjugated.

The worst kept secret in the Middle East is that the Israeli's have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them anywhere in the theater. It is no secret that the Israeli's will use their very capable air force to take out targets that threaten their safety. Within days of the formation of any so-called Palestinian state, Israeli warplanes and helicopters would be bombing the places in the new so-called Palestinian state where the rockets and artillery shells killing Israeli citizens were coming from.

But, because the so-called Palestinian state would then be a sovereign nation, the UN, certainly no friend of Israel's and outright anti-semitic at times, would come in on the side of the Palestinians. The United States would be forced to "re-evaluate" its historic position of supporting Israel and whatever decision the current administration made would be the wrong one. Simply put, it would be World War Three and it would be a nuclear war, especially if the Iranians are allowed to finish their nuclear weapons. So, creating a so-called Palestinian State would transform a bloody and probably insoluble regional problem into a world problem.

The Jews have been in a constant state of war in that region for over five thousand years. It takes a uniquely naive' personality to think that in one generation they can end border disputes and racial hatred that has existed since the bronze age. Thousands of years ago, God told Abraham that, "I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee." Israel is perfectly capable of handling its own problems if we keep our nose out of their business. The wisest policy the United States can take toward the "Palestinian Problem" is to keep giving Israel whatever it needs to defend itself and let it take care of its own problems in the only way that the people of that region understand.

ONLY IN OKLAHOMA - COOKSON HILLS ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE "OPTS OUT" OF REGULATION BY CORPORATION COMMISSION.

2008-07-22T15:11:00.003-05:00

I am involved in a billing dispute with a small electric cooperative in rural Eastern Oklahoma, Cookson Hills Electric Cooperative. It is my contention that, among other things, they generated unnecessary service charges far out of proportion to the amount due and then demanded extortionate terms to restore service.

After speaking to Cookson Hill's attorney, I decided to exercise my right as an Oklahoma citizen to file a complaint with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. However, I was informed by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission that Cookson Hills Electric Cooperative OPTED OUT of regulation by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission several years ago.

Wow what a trick. Can I do that? Can I "opt out" of regulation by the Oklahoma Bar Association and continuing practicing law? For that matter, can I "opt out" of regulation by the Oklahoma Tax Commission and stop paying taxes? How about "opting out" of regulation by the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority so that I don't have to pay tolls. Can I do that? I don't think so. It must be nice to be small, rural, public utility and be able to choose to ignore the primary state regulatory authority for your industry.

Unhappy with what I found, I began looking for Federal Regulatory authority over Cookson Hills Electric Cooperative. While they are subject to certain provisions of the United States Code under the Rural Electrification Act by and large it appears that they are basically an unregulated public utility. Wow. What a trick. Totally unregulated in operation but operating under a federally mandated monopoly.

So, I began looking for evidence of any contact between Cookson Hills Electric Cooperative and an outside regulatory authority or auditing agency. Returning to my original contention that Cookson Hills had generated unnecessary costs far out of proportion to the amount in question, I "Googled" the terms "Cookson Hills cost analysis." Two documents came up on the top of the list.

The first hit, a FEMA audit of disaster funds granted to Cookson Hills, dated August 9, 2004 (LINK) stated in part:

The Co-op did not follow federal procurement regulations to contract for $907,274 in disaster work. As a result, fair and open competition did not occur and FEMA had no assurance that contract costs claimed were reasonable. Further, the Co-op claimed $255,462 ($209,231 FEMA share) of costs that the OIG found questionable. The questioned costs consisted of ineligible labor costs ($176,080), duplicate costs ($37,974), improperly categorized costs ($17,122), markups on contract costs ($15,442), and an accounting error ($8,844).

A quarter of a million dollars in "questionable" costs. That's a lot of money. The second hit, a Department of Homeland Security audit of procurement policies in electric cooperatives (LINK) stated the following:

As shown in the table below, electric cooperatives used non-competitive, time-and-material (T&M) contracts without cost ceilings, did not maintain sufficient records for procurement history, and did not perform cost analyses.

Cookson Hills was one of nine rural electric cooperatives in the nation cited for failure to perform, among other things, appropriate cost analysis.

So, in summary, what did I find? A virtually unregulated public utility that operates under a federally mandated monopoly that has been cited by the Federal Government for failure to use good financial judgment and appropriate procurement practices.

While speaking to the folks at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, I asked them just exactly who does regulate Cookson Hills these days? They told me that I would have to talk to my legislators about that.

I think I will.

Theological Giant J.I. Packer Says "Gay Rights" An Assault on the Gospel

2008-07-21T10:01:00.003-05:00

Canadian theological giant J.I. Packer spoke out on his beliefs concerning the compatibility of gays and the gospel recently. His comments can be heard on the YouTube video below.

Most remarkable about this statement is the fact that Packer is a Canadian and made the statement from Canada where he could be arrested for hate crimes for criticizing the gay rights agenda. Earlier this year, Packer resigned from the Anglican Church of Canada because he believes "many of its bishops are "arguably heretical" for adhering to "poisonous liberalism."

The following is an excerpt from a Vancouver Sun article printed April 28, 2008. A link to the full article is HERE.

James (J.I.) Packer, whom Time magazine recently named as one of the planet's 25 most influential evangelicals, said he hesitated before using the harsh terms to describe the Anglican bishops, but believed he must do so in the name of truth.
(SNIP) Oxford-trained Packer was interviewed at a Friday gathering of about 300 members of the breakaway Anglican Network in Canada, which officially welcomed South American Anglican Primate Gregory Venables to Canada as their spiritual leader -- against the express wishes of Canada's top Anglican, Primate Fred Hiltz.
Packer, 81, said he can no longer serve under Vancouver-area Bishop Michael Ingham, who in 2002 sanctioned a diocesan vote that eventually permitted the blessing of same-sex couples at eight out of 67 parishes.
"He is a bishop who appears heretical," Packer said, comparing Ingham to high-profile progressive U.S. Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong and Scottish Episcopal Church Bishop Richard Holloway.
(SNIP) Known for the way he does not sugarcoat his conservative Christian beliefs despite his soft-spoken, gracious demeanour, Packer said the Bible is the "absolute" authority on divine truth, which clearly describes homosexuality as a grave sin.
Opening his English Standard Version of the Bible, of which he was chief editor, Packer read out passages from 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, in which the apostle Paul compares "men who lie with men" to drunkards, thieves, slanderers and adulterers, none of whom will enter the kingdom of heaven.
"That's a very solemn apostolic warning," said Packer, a self-described "Calvinist Anglican" who wrote the book, The Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life.

(SNIP) Packer described the blessings that many of Canada's Anglican bishops' are willing to give to active gays and lesbians, as well as the bishops' openness to diverse ways of interpreting the Bible, as "persistent unrepentant doctrinal disorder."
The author of the 1973 book, Knowing God, which alone has sold more than three million copies, said it is "utterly tragic" that some conservative Anglicans felt they had no option but to leave the Anglican Church of Canada.
Asking himself why God would allow "poisonous liberalism" and its views of God and homosexuality to grow and flourish in Europe and North America, Packer said it must be so the West would eventually realize how dangerous such ideas are -- "so the poison will be fully squeezed out."
(SNIP) Packer urged Anglicans who are adamantly opposed to liberal developments in the Anglican church in Canada and the U.S. to remain "tough" as they re-align themselves under Archbishop Venables into a new non-geographically-based form of Anglicanism.

Dobson Flip Flops on McCain Endorsement!

2008-07-21T06:08:00.007-05:00

In a copyrighted story by the Associated Press, Dr. James Dobson announced that he might endorse John McCain, stating:

"I never thought I would hear myself saying this," Dobson said in a radio broadcast to air Monday. "... While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might."
The story continues:
"Dobson and other evangelical leaders unimpressed by McCain increasingly are taking a lesser-of-two-evils approach to the 2008 race." (SNIP)
"There's nothing dishonorable in a person rethinking his or her positions, especially in a constantly changing political context," Dobson said in a statement to the AP. "Barack Obama contradicts and threatens everything I believe about the institution of the family and what is best for the nation. His radical positions on life, marriage and national security force me to reevaluate the candidacy of our only other choice, John McCain."
Earlier, Dobson had said he could not in good conscience vote for McCain, citing the candidate's support for embryonic stem cell research and opposition to a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, as well as concerns about McCain's temper and foul language. (SNIP)
Of his new position, Dobson said in the statement to the AP, "If that is a flip-flop, then so be it."

John McCain is literally the anti-Christian GOP candidate. He has insulted Dr. Dobson and every Christian voter in the country repeatedly. McCain has made it clear that he does not want Dobson's support. Sometimes the only proper course is to remain silent and at least maintain your dignity. But, as a friend of mine is fond of saying, "There are some people who have something to say and some people who just have to say something." It is becoming increasingly apparent that the "Christian Right" is more interested in saying something than having something to say. Otherwise they would not have abandoned their principles for political expediency. I agree with Doug Phillips who said in his blog:

More important than who wins or loses the 2008 election is this: Will Christians look to the Bible as their absolute standard for determining what principles must guide their voting practices? At stake is far more than the presidency. The question concerns the conscience of the Church. We can “win” an election, and yet sell our spiritual birthright. Conversely, we can “lose” an election yet remain faithful to the Word of God, thus preserving the conscience of the body of Christ, and enjoying the favor of the Lord.

The Lost Boy

2008-07-20T06:48:00.008-05:00

"I'd rather be arrested for shoplifting than ever be an evangelical leader again. There was a certain basic and decent honesty about stealing pork chops that selling God had lacked."

Frank Schaeffer

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These days, it is not uncommon for evangelical parents to be in a near constant state of mourning for the spiritual loss of their children. The faith of the next generation, when there is one at all, bears little resemblance to the faith of our fathers. There is no more telling illustration of this situation than Frank (aka Frankie) Schaeffer. Schaeffer's father Francis was literally the spiritual father of the modern evangelical movement and its leading intellectual figure for decades. Frank Schaeffer's bitterness toward the evangelical movement and consistent movement away from traditional Christianity should serve as a cautionary tale for us all.

Evangelicalism has a strong tendency to discount everything said by those who disagree with it, especially those who have left the faith. This refusal to face facts is like coming upon a critically injured person on the freeway and then refusing to listen to their dying declaration about how the accident happened.

Frank Schaeffer is saying a lot these days much of it not very flattering toward evangelicals. A lot of it appears to be motivated by bitterness, anger and self absorption. But, the Frank Schaeffer who is now calling his father an abuser and his mother "controlling" is the same "Frankie" Schaeffer who decades ago warned us what was to come in the culture. His ideas deserve to be heard if not universally accepted.

Schaeffer alleges that the social movement his father founded has been co-opted first by evangelical personality cults and then by political opportunists. There can be no doubt that Francis Schaeffer was the leading intellectual figure in the evangelical movement of the last generation. He and John Whitehead (another story unto himself) are personally responsible for much of what is called the "religious right." By virtue of his proximity, Schaeffer should have knowledge that the rest of us do not. Schaeffer is largely correct in stating that the major evangelical organizations tend to be personality cults and completely correct in stating that the movement has been taken over (and I would add mis-managed into insignificance) by partisan political forces.

Schaeffer has always been scathing in his criticism of so-called Christian art and music and was correct in doing so. Comparing the warmed over pop that most churches now offer as "worship music" to Bach and Beethoven is simply ridiculous. Modern "worship" music with its simplistic melodies and repetitive phrasing, far from elevating the soul and challenging the intellect, tends to anesthetize them the same way that chanting a mantra does in Eastern religions. Placing a Michaelangelo alongside a Thomas Kincaid should end most of the argument concerning the visual arts. Schaeffer is right. The Christian art of our generation is a disgrace.

But above all, Schaeffer is criticized for abandoning the evangelical faith in favor of the Greek Orthodox church. While I cannot condone his action, I can certainly understand and even empathize with his problem. The modern evangelical church really has no place for intellectuals. It has replaced the vibrancy of Christian thought with platitudes and a polyester clad orthodoxy that is at least as constricting as the theological orthodoxy it claims to denounce. In his groundbreaking book, "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" Mark Knoll quipped: "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind."

This lack of an evangelical mind is perhaps the underlying reason for the loss of Frank Schaeffer and those like him. I once had a conversation with a charming, incredibly bright lady that illustrates this situation well. Her husband was successful and well respected in their community. She had been a faithful church woman her entire life. She lived what appeared to be the American dream until her youngest child was horribly injured in a freak accident. The child lived for months afterward and she and her husband lived by the bedside as their precious child slipped away.

She told me that during the depths of her depression, both before and after her child's death, that she simply had no energy for "playing the church game" and the faith that should have been her greatest comfort was in fact just another burden to bear. She was in a place far beyond keeping up appearances to bolster the weaker faith of curious onlookers. During this time, she took solace in what amounted to an evangelical liturgy that allowed her, in her state of physical and mental desperation, to still come before God in a meaningful way.

It is in these moments of extremity that modern evangelicalism with its pop culture worship and self centered theology frequently loses its best and brightest. In any congregation there are people suffering through life situations that will not change and bearing burdens that the person next to them could not possibly understand. And, there are people whose souls have suffered such deep hurt that they will never completely heal .... in this life at least. These are often the people with the most to offer their community of faith. But, platitudes from the pulpit don't work with these folks and what passes for worship is likely to annoy them. They need a faith theologically complex enough to embrace the inexplicability of difficult life circumstances and smart enough to engage them. They usually don't find it.

Fortunately for the evangelical pastors, these folks usually go away. Modern evangelicalism is woefully unequipped to deal with the intellectual complexities of modern life and the dark night of the soul that its best and brightest often endure. And so, they slip away, some quietly, but some with a bang like Frank aka Frankie Schaeffer.

I cannot condone Frank Schaeffer's verbal uncovering of his father's nakedness. It displays an appalling and unattractive lack of respect for a man of his father's stature. And I cannot condone his departure from the faith. But, the tale of Frank Schaeffer should serve as final warning to the evangelical establishment. Something is terribly wrong in the evangelical culture and you had better go about righting it before the faith itself is lost to future generations.

----------------------------

A very good discussion of the "Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" can be found HERE.

McDonalds - Opposition to Gay Marriage = Hate

2008-07-15T14:12:00.000-05:00

Liberty Counsel
NEWS RELEASE
Contact: PUBLIC RELATIONS DEPARTMENT - 800-671-1776

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 15, 2008

Liberty Counsel Holds Joint Press Conference to Address McDonalds’ Anti-Christian Attacks

Chicago, IL – On Wednesday, July 16, at 10:00 a.m., Liberty Counsel will participate in a joint press conference with the American Family Association (AFA), Americans for Truth and the Illinois Family Institute in front of the McDonalds restaurant across from McDonalds' corporate headquarters in Oakbrook, IL. Matt Barber, Director of Cultural Affairs with Liberty Counsel, will address the media.

Recently, the McDonalds Corporation contributed thousands of dollars and joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, a radical homosexual activist organization that pushes the homosexual agenda, including calling for legalization of so-called "same-sex marriage." In so doing, McDonalds has publicly sided in the ongoing culture war against the majority of Americans who hold traditional family values. For this reason, AFA called for the boycott against McDonalds.

"Unfortunately, McDonalds has chosen to side with militant homosexual activists over people with traditional values," said Matt Barber. "The company has further escalated the controversy by lodging a personal attack against the tens of millions of Americans who support traditional sexual morality and legitimate marriage. While referring to Christians and other people with traditional values, McDonalds spokesman Bill Whitman arrogantly told the Washington Post that, 'Hatred has no place in our culture,' thereby suggesting that people who support the historical definition of marriage are simply motivated by 'hate.' This insult is highly offensive, and anyone who supports traditional marriage should boycott McDonalds and tell the company why they’re doing so."

Mathew D. Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented, "McDonalds should focus on food quality and safety issues instead of attacking the values held by the majority of people worldwide. Marriage between a man and a woman is the norm throughout the world. McDonalds' personal attack against those who support the traditional definition of marriage, while siding with a narrow group that promotes a radical redefinition, shows that company executives are out to lunch. McDonalds might as well change their signs to read 'billions and billions insulted.'"

###

McCain - LaRaza Si, Dobson No!

2008-07-15T08:04:00.003-05:00

Presidential hopeful John McCain addressed a latino political group called La Raza Monday. La Raza literally translated means "the race." The motto of this organization is, ""For La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada," which literally translates, "For the (latino) race everything, for everyone else, nothing." La Raza has an ambitious agenda whose overall strategy is referred to as "Reconquista" which literally translates "the Reconquest." La Raza argues that the Spanish territories that have been part of the United States for over a century were illegally seized and should be returned to the Mexican people. This transfer would include the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California at minimum. What exactly would happen to the millions of non-latinos in these states given La Raza's motto is best not talked about.

By any definition, La Raza is a radical organization dedicated to the overthrow of the United States Government, at least in the states named above. If La Raza were composed of white separatists, its leaders would be in prison and the very mention of any association with it would result in immediate and permanent termination of a political career. But, for some reason, I guess the same reason that the generally applicable laws of the United States do not apply to latinos who sneak into the United States illegally, it is not only socially acceptable to be publicly associated with La Raza but actually applauded by some as being "inclusive" and shrewd political move.

I can remember the time when it was politically shrewd to be privately connected with the Ku Klux Klan and other political and social organizations that opposed integration. It wasn't right then and this isn't right now. Racism is racism if it is practiced by a white, a black or a latino.

McCain's inexplicable conduct before La Raza is made all the more egregious by his refusal to meet with key Evangelical leaders like Dr. James Dobson. How can you expect McCain to protect and defend the constitution of the United States when he is willing to appear before an organization dedicated to destruction of the American way of life? Is there any organization, except a Christian organization of course, that McCain would not address in his quest for political power?

When McCain was sworn in as a Naval Officer he swore the following oath upon his honor as officer and a gentleman: "I, John McCain , do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic ..." Every honorable serviceman that I have ever spoken to on this issue regards that oath as a lifetime committment that does not end when you take the uniform off for the last time. By his two faced immigration policy as voiced before La Raza, a sworn enemy of the United States, John McCain has violated his officer's oath. How can we expect him to honor the oath of office as President?

Phil Gramm - Let Them Eat Cake

2008-07-13T10:23:00.006-05:00

Exactly what universe is Phil Gramm living in? Apparently the same that Bush I was living in when he showed that he had no idea how much a loaf of bread or other basic grocery items cost.

Mr. Gramm, I have a few choice words for you. YOUR recession may be in YOUR HEAD. But, mine is very real. I have a practice, family responsibilities and a lifestyle that require me to drive several hundred and sometimes a couple of thousand or more miles per month. The cost of gasoline has caused me to eat out several fewer times per month, cut out some entertainment entirely and even cut back on some basic items. I am deferring needed maintenance on my vehicles and my properties. And, I am not taking out of town cases any more unless the client is willing to pay my travel expenses.

I suspect that I am not alone in this situation. If you multiply my private situation by the number of Americans similarly affected, you have a ripple going through our consumer based economy that cannot have positive results unless of course you are living in the parallel universe of Democratic utopians who think we make it all work with bicycles, public transportation and a total restructuring of the auto based American lifestyle.

But, this is not just a personal recession. There is no question that the real estate industry is in free fall and the second largest federal bank takeover in U.S. history occurred last week as a result of it. There have already been several disasters in financial institutions and it doesn't appear that we have reached the bottom yet.

Couple all of this with the fact that Israel may very well launch a very necessary pre-emptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, denying Iranian oil to the world market and probably locking up the Straits of Hormuz through which somewhere between twenty and forty percent of the world's oil must pass and you have the recipe for a world wide depression that could make the 1930's look like a day in the park.

Gramm's statement is an indication of one of the primary problems in the GOP. Instead of addressing lower and middle class economic concerns like a shrinking job base, unfair foreign competition and competition for existing domestic work by illegal aliens, the Country Club Wing of the GOP has simply made it unfashionable and perhaps even disloyal to talk about it in their company.

Well guess what Country Club GOP Brahmans, gas is over four bucks a gallon, the price of everything in the grocery store is going up, people have less money and too much of the money they do have is going abroad to finance corrupt middle eastern governments that do not support our national interests or the American way of life. Bubba may be poor but he isn't stupid. He knows all of this and then some.

Given the above, the GOP may be in for a rude awakening come November and we may see if Obama can take on the mantle of FDR as a depression president.

History now teaches that Marie Antoinette was not making a callous statement at all when she supposedly said, "let them eat cake." What she is alleged to have really suggested was to remove the taxes on cake and pastry so that the whole output of French bakeries would be available to the general population. But, since history is written by the survivors, her statement has been popularly misquoted and taken out of context.

Whatever version of history you choose to believe, Marie Antoinette at least recognized that there was a problem and showed some sort of sympathy for the plight of her subjects. Phil Gramm does not even do that. His callous disregard for the economic problems of a large portion of the American population have rightly embarrassed John McCain and will probably hurt him and the GOP come November.

Brits Surrender to Sharia Law!

2008-07-09T16:23:00.003-05:00

What follows is an excerpt from Cal Thomas's column today at Townhall.com. The entire column can be read HERE:

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So this is how it ends: not with a bang, but a whimper.

The most senior judge in England has declared that Islamic legal principles in Sharia law may be used within Muslim communities in Britain to settle marital arguments and regulate finance. Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said, "Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law."

In his speech at an East London mosque, Lord Phillips said Muslims in Britain could use Islamic legal principles as long as punishments - and divorce rulings - comply with English law. Sharia law does not comply with English law. It is a law unto itself.

And so the English who gave us the Magna Carta in 1215, William Blackstone and the foundation of American law are slowly succumbing to the dictates of intolerant Islam and sowing seeds of their own destruction. (SNIP)

... It is impossible to reconcile this antiquated "law" with English law, so what could Lord Phillips mean when he says that Sharia law can be used in Muslim communities as long as such laws comply with English law? This will mean English law must become subordinate to Sharia law. This is Dhimmitude, an Islamic system of religious apartheid begun in the 7th century that forces all other religions and cultures to accept an inferior status once Muslims become the majority. (SNIP)

... British Muslims who wish to live under Sharia law might have stayed in the countries from which they came - or return to them. But their objective appears to be domination of England, not assimilation. This also seems to be the goal for Muslims in other countries with large and growing Muslim populations.

There is no due process under Sharia law. Lord Phillips has signed the death warrant for his nation if his opinion becomes the law of England. It's one thing to fight a war and lose it. It's quite another to willingly surrender without a struggle.

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An excellent article on this subject titled British Muslims Don't Want Sharia can be read HERE.

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Oklahoma Supreme Court: Judge Correct in Vacating Tulsa Same-Sex Couple’s “Divorce”

2008-07-03T05:46:00.003-05:00

OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a state judge acted within his authority when he vacated a divorce unknowingly granted to two women. Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case in October 2007 on behalf of then-Oklahoma Speaker of the House Lance Cargill, arguing that the state cannot grant a divorce to two people when the state does not even recognize them as married.

“The opponents of marriage aren’t merely trying to redefine marriage; they’re trying to eliminate marriage. Recognizing a same-sex ‘divorce’ would mean recognizing a ‘marriage’ that doesn’t exist under an Oklahoma law that voters passed by a margin of more than 3-to-1,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks. “The high court was right to determine that the lower court acted within its authority when it vacated the divorce decree it erroneously issued because it didn’t know the parties involved were of the same sex.”

Seventy-six percent of the state’s voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2004 protecting marriage between one man and one woman. Oklahoma’s marriage amendment also stipulates that same-sex “marriages” performed in other states are not recognized as valid and binding in the state of Oklahoma.

In its ruling, the Oklahoma Supreme Court wrote, “Disclosure that the purported marriage was between two women was not made, and it was not until contacted by the local paper that the trial court discovered this information…. The court has power to vacate when the successful party acted improperly to obtain the decree or if there was irregularity in obtaining the decree. Such actions are shown in the facts in the present matter.”

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The preceding is a press release from The Alliance Defense Fun which is available online at:
http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/news/story.aspx?cid=4594

The full text of the opinion in O’Darling v. O’Darling is available at: www.telladf.org/UserDocs/ODarlingOpinion.pdf.

The full text of the amicus brief is available at: http://www.telladf.org/UserDocs/O'DarlingAmicus.pdf

ADF attorneys filed their friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Cargill in October 2007 (www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=4268).

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ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.

The "Hale Warning" and False Rape Accusations

2008-07-02T06:26:00.003-05:00

Until the 1980's, American juries were frequently given what was called "The Hale Warning" in rape and sexual assault cases. Named after its author, a highly respected 17th Century British judge, Matthew Hale, it cautioned the jury: "rape is an accusation easily to be made, hard to be proved, and harder yet to be defended by the party accused, tho' never so innocent."

Like many other traditions in the common law, The Hale Warning did not survive the feminist revolution and has generally fell out of use . However, statistics concerning false rape accusations indicate that perhaps it should return. In the past couple of days I have read literally dozens of articles on this issue. What follows is one of the better summaries of the statistics I found. It is an excerpt from an article (link HERE) by Marc E. Angelucci and Glenn Sacks, printed September 18, 2004, on NewsWithViews.com:

According to a nine-year study conducted by former Purdue sociologist Eugene J. Kanin, in over 40 percent of the cases reviewed, the complainants eventually admitted that no rape had occurred (Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1994). Kanin also studied rape allegations in two large Midwestern universities and found that 50 percent of the allegations were recanted by the accuser. (snip)
Kanin's findings are hardly unique. In 1985 the Air Force conducted a study of 556 rape accusations. Over one quarter of the accusers admitted, either just before they took a lie detector test of after they had failed it, that no rape occurred. A further investigation by independent reviewers found that 60 percent of the original rape allegations were false.
The most common reasons the women gave for falsely accusing rape were "spite or revenge," and to compensate for feelings of guilt or shame (Forensic Science Digest, vol. 11. no. 4, December 1985).
A Washington Post investigation of rape reports in seven Virginia and Maryland counties in 1990 and 1991 found that nearly one in four were unfounded. When contacted by the Post, many of the alleged victims admitted that they had lied. It is true, of course, that not every accuser who recants had accused falsely. But it is also true that some who do not recant were not telling the truth.
According to a 1996 Department of Justice Report, of the roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases analyzed with DNA evidence over the previous seven years, 2,000 excluded the primary suspect, and another 2,000 were inconclusive. The report notes that these figures mirror an informal National Institute of Justice survey of private laboratories, and suggests that there exists "some strong, underlying systemic problems that generate erroneous accusations and convictions."

That false allegations are a major problem has been confirmed by several prominent prosecutors, including Linda Fairstein, who heads the New York County District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit. Fairstein, the author of Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape, says, "there are about 4,000 reports of rape each year in Manhattan. Of these, about half simply did not happen."
Craig Silverman, a former Colorado prosecutor known for his zealous prosecution of rapists during his 16-year career, says that false rape accusations occur with "scary frequency." As a regular commentator on the Bryant trial for Denver's ABC affiliate, Silverman noted that "any honest veteran sex assault investigator will tell you that rape is one of the most falsely reported crimes." According to Silverman, a Denver sex-assault unit commander estimates that nearly half of all reported rape claims are false.
The media has largely ignored these studies and experts and has instead promoted the notion that only 2% of rape allegations are false. This figure was made famous by feminist Susan Brownmiller in her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. Brownmiller was relaying the alleged comments of a New York judge concerning the rate of false rape accusations in a New York City police precinct in 1974.
A 1997 Columbia Journalism Review analysis of rape statistics noted that the 2% statistic is often falsely attributed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and has no clear and credible study to support it. The FBI's statistic for "unfounded" rape accusations is 9%, but this definition only includes cases where the accuser recants or the evidence contradicts her story. Instances where the case is dismissed for lack of evidence are not included in the "unfounded" category.

Sobering statistics.

OBA General Counsel Arrested

2008-06-30T10:46:00.005-05:00

Shockwaves are running through the Oklahoma legal community today after it was revealed that Oklahoma Bar Association General Counsel Dan Murdock was arrested for sexual battery Saturday night in Oklahoma City. The story is being reported by local Oklahoma City media.

First, the fact that he has been arrested does not mean that he is guilty. It only means that an allegation has arisen sufficient for the officer to make an arrest.

Second, over the years Dan Murdock has, by virtue of his position as chief ethics enforcer of the OBA, ticked a lot of people off. The very fact that the recent Gassaway disbarment was mentioned in news reports of his arrest brings this fact into sharp focus and sets up the suspicion at least of a set up.

And third, lawyers and judges are particularly vulnerable to this type of incident. The very fact that a charge has been filed can ruin a career regardless of the guilt or innocence of the accused. In the minds of many, the fact that an accusation has been lodged is proof of its veracity regardless of the facts. Sadly, I advise my minister clients to never let themselves be alone in the same room with a woman not their wife or a minor just because of the frequency of this type of accusation.

The traditional strategy in cases like this has always been for the accused to let the system work and refuse to give their accusers credibility by responding to them. But, in this age of instant communications and cyber-lynching that strategy does not always work. Some public figures are fighting back. The classic example of this is local Judge Jesse Harris who just filed a libel suit against his accusers in a similar case.

The real problem here is that by mere proximity to dangerous and vindictive people, attorneys and judges open themselves up to this type of charge. Mere proximity to a misguided or dangerous person can open a public figure up to all sorts of mischief. False allegations of sexual misconduct are becoming the weapon of choice by some misguided folks these days.

Dan Murdock has practiced law for decades in Oklahoma. He has a good reputation both in the bar and with the public. He has a lot of friends and probably, because of his service as ethics prosecutor for the bar association, a lot of enemies. I don't know if he did it or not. I am comfortable waiting to see what the courts decide. I just hope that he isn't tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion before a verdict is reached based on the facts of the case.

The News Was So Bad ...

2008-06-21T09:08:00.003-05:00

I have avoided blogging about the substantive legal cases and events that have transpired in the past few days. But, it is time to speak about these cases, briefly at least.

The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that enemy combatants in the custody of our military and intelligence agencies may have access to American civil courts for purposes of habeas corpus determination, etc. I don't think we now have a veteran serving on the high court or we would have had at least one justice say something to the effect of: "Very well my fellow justices. By your ivory tower logic and lofty aspirations you have crippled both our combat forces and our intelligence agencies to the point that they neither can nor will ever operate within the rules again. Dead men don't file politically motivated war crimes complaints or apply for habeas corpus and burn undercover intelligence operatives in the process. And there are still places all over the world to hide a prisoner, work on him until you get what you want and then dispose of him and for that matter there are plenty of discreet people willing to do it for a price. So, by your shortsighted actions and insistence upon meddling in a place where lawyers and judges do not belong, you have insured the effect that you hoped to avoid."

The California Supreme Court recently ruled that the gay marriage ban approved by a majority of California voters was unconstitutional and held that gay marriages could be performed in that state. The immediate effect in San Diego County was that fourteen county court employees who voiced religious objections to performing the ceremonies or participating in them will probably lose their jobs. So many court employees are objecting that the county government said that it could not offer them the reasonable accommodation of their religious beliefs that is their right under previous U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The long term effect is that there will be similar litigation all over the United States as gay couples travel to California to be married and then return to their home states and demand full recognition of their alleged "marriage" under the full faith and credit clause of the U.S. Constitution. My ethics professor in law school taught her classes that any candidate for the bar that did not approve of so called equal rights for homosexuals should not be allowed to practice law. That professor will soon be helping to select Oklahoma judges. So, it looks as though there may soon be no place in the court house for religious citizens who oppose so-called homosexual rights.

On a bright note, a Marine Corps judge dropped war crimes charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, citing undue political influence on the court martial process by members of the Marine Corp high command. Charges have already been dropped against most of the Marines involved in the so-called "Haditha Massacre." Chessani and his civilian attorneys with the Thomas More Law Center (an organization of which I am proud to be an affiliate attorney) are considering libel suits against members of congress who twisted the facts in this heartbreaking situation for political purposes. The bad news is that it looks as though the Marine Corps may appeal. The net effect of political witch hunts like this one is dead soldiers and Marines in the short term and an ineffective military in the long term. Over the years, I have talked to and read about dozens of career officers who resigned during the Clinton administration because they could no longer obey a draft dodging Commander in Chief that they did not respect and who did not respect them. If every American soldier and Marine is going to have to worry about being court martialled for killing the enemy in life or death situations like Haditha, then no one in their right mind will continue to serve, particularly, bright, aggressive career officers like Chessani. The net effect is that the courts are now doing to the American military the same thing that they have done to the American culture.

The Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting pastors to volunteer to endorse political candidates from the pulpit and thus generate legal challenges to existing IRS regulations, federal court cases and IRS operating procedures which forbid such activity. ADF Senior Counsel Erik Stanley makes a strong case that such activity is protected by the First Amendment. While I heartily endorse this project as the only way that current, very likely unconstitutional, IRS policies can be effectively challenged, I wish it was being done in an election year where there was a candidate that I, as a Christian, could feel comfortable endorsing. And, regardless of the candidates involved, I would advise local pastors to exercise caution until: (1) they are sure that their existing organizational documents, books and tax history will bear intense IRS scrutiny; (2) they fully understand the possible ramifications of their actions; and (3) they are absolutely sure that they have officially secured pro-bono (no cost) legal representation and are guaranteed full funding of the full cost of their defense.

I wish there was some clever way to summarize all of this and make a rational point. But, there isn't. A few years back, one of the most respected liberal constitutional law professors in the nation refused to release his always highly anticipated revised constitutional law text. The reason? This professor, one of the best minds in the legal profession, could make no sense of the current constitutional jurisprudence of the high court. Kennedy, the swing vote, is accused of being a legal existentialist, especially on First Amendment issues. I think Ann Coulter, quoting an un-named law professor said it better, "This is what happens when the swing justice is the dumb justice."

Nuff said.

In Defense of Rednecks ...

2008-06-18T05:41:00.008-05:00

I am a redneck. And an Okie. My redneck Okie credentials are impeccable.

While I was born here in Tulsa, I was raised in rural Oklahoma on a hardscrabble farm. My parents were classic Okies. My mother's people were sharecroppers. My father got his social security number working for Twentieth Century Fox on the Oklahoma crew of the Grapes of Wrath. My Uncle John was an extra in the movie as was his car that Fox technicians "hillbillied" up for the classic scenes showing Okies leaving the land.

I lived in a humble house that people outside the culture probably looked down on but I drove a flashy new car and played an expensive guitar that would now be worth more than the original mortgage on the house. I still own that humble farm house and I am not one bit ashamed of it. My father worked hard to pay it off and it kept us warm and dry.

I made my first quarter picking cotton alongside my mother in an Arkansas River bottom cotton field where poor whites, blacks and Mexicans worked side by side to earn a few bucks a day. By the time I graduated from high school, I had worked in the fields on a regular basis as a hay hauler, a fence builder, a ranch hand and even a turkey breeding technician. Every summer my neck would burn a rich, dark brick red from constant exposure to the sun doing honest work in the fields.

The word redneck has become a pejorative of late, a liberal code word for racism and ignorance. And that is an undeserved insult. My redneck father was the most decent man I have ever known. He would never mistreat anyone and he was certainly not ignorant. He was not lazy. He worked himself into an early grave working both a day job and farming nights trying to "get ahead." And he was no coward. He had a handful of medals from WWII to prove his "moral fiber" including the Bronze Star for bravery. Describing the Okies of the 45th Division, Ernie Pyle once wrote,

"The men of Oklahoma are drawling and soft-spoken... Something of the purity of the soil seems to be in them.... An Oklahoman is straight and direct. He is slow to criticize and hard to anger, but once he is convinced of the wrong of something, brother, watch out."

There could not have been a better description of my father.

Once, upon hearing me use a slightly derogatory nickname for a local black man who was a bit of character, my mom sternly warned me, "God has given colored folks a terrible burden to carry. Don't you ever do anything to make that burden worse or take advantage of them."

Our house was humble but there were books everywhere. Classics, current works and trashy novels all occupied our bookshelves and we read them all. I read The Grapes of Wrath, John Gunther's Inside Europe, Mein Kampf and a biography of Douglas McArthur the summer I was ten.

My mother's people were musicians when they were not working so there was always music around the house and they taught me to play it from the time I was big enough to hold a guitar. You hear the same country blues and bluegrass music on PBS now and it is recognized as a classic American art form.

In his syndicated column today (link HERE), Paul Greenberg eloquently came to the defense of Rednecks, southern culture in general and southern language in particular:

Every time a perfectly good American word is lost, we are all deprived. And the cumulative effect is a life-destroying erosion of the language, which is sapped of its power, vitality and variety. Redneck an insult? Rednecks would only laugh at the idea - because rednecks are proud of who they are. That's why they can afford a sense of humor. In a world of anemic, self-censored, pre-washed, so-called commentary, their pride is refreshing.
Who are these rednecks anyway? One inadequate definition would be to say they're the descendants of the Scots-Irish who pushed the American frontier across first the Appalachians and then ever westward, spreading as far north as the hills of Pennsylvania and as far south and west as wide-open Texas, leaving their manners, speech and customs an indelible if often unremarked part of the American character.
Oh, yes, rednecks are also fighters. Which means that, ignored and snubbed in times of peace, or just patronized by those who think their very name an insult, they are always called on when the country's in real trouble. To this day, they are part of the backbone of the United States military. They are, in short, people to tie to. They will stand their ground, as America's enemies have discovered since 1776 and long before. They need no one to come to their defense, let alone shield them from their honest name. Yes, they can be touchy, but only about matters of honor.
Rednecks embrace simplicity as a welcome change from the kind of fraudulent sophistication you can hear at a click of the channel on television or on National Platitudinous Radio. But that doesn't make them simple. Quite the opposite. Their code is as involved as any Bedouin's, and maybe more so than the Southern gentleman's. Indeed, the two - gentleman and redneck - are part of the Southern whole, complementing and competing with each other, each half-envying, half-pitying the other but aware they share an indissoluble bond that involves the land, the language and whatever is the essence of what the South is, or was. Both may now be endangered species, united by what they are not: false.
Those who object to the name redneck, if not the species itself, might as well take offense at Arkie or Okie or black or Creole. Hasn't the Southern language lost enough distinctive words, and therefore distinctive thought, to the bowdlerizers, the euphemizers and sanitizers who would leave the treasure of the Southern tongue as barren and burned-over as the once green acres Sherman ravaged on his march to the sea? Enough verbicide. The toll has already been too heavy. Let's not lose a word that sums up a whole ethos.

I wish I had said that.

This Blog Was Just "Crawled"

2008-06-17T13:23:00.004-05:00

For the past one hour, fifty two minutes and forty eight seconds someone in Durant, Oklahoma appears to have been "crawling" my blog. This crawl was unusual in that it appears to have been done manually. Because of the amount of information involved, I don't believe they had time to read everything so it looks as though they may have been manually downloading the blog contents.

Recently, I noticed limited activity on the blog from the U.S. Justice Department and after I "outed" that activity I noticed very similar activity from a commercial contractor. But, this is not unusual for bloggers who regularly post on political issues.

However, if any other Oklahoma political bloggers have noticed this type of activity from a user connected to the net through ISP James Cable Partners, L.P., Durant, Oklahoma IP address: 70.247.84.241 please contact me offline at -- flash6453@mypacks.net --.

Charges Dismissed Against Former Wagoner County DA

2008-06-13T07:03:00.004-05:00

Former Wagoner County District Attorney Richard Gray was cleared of embezzlement charges this week by an Okmulgee County court. Judge Michael Claver granted a mistrial over problems with the chain of evidence for key exhibits. The charges were dismissed with prejudice and cannot be refiled.

In a copyrighted story in the Tulsa World (link HERE), Gray's attorney, Clark Brewster said, " "I've never seen a case so bad as this one. It was completely frivolous. This man went through a tremendous amount of character attacks."

In that same story Gray said, " "I'm extremely excited about the verdict," he said. "The only thing that upset me was I wasn't given an opportunity to prove how corrupt the investigation" by the Attorney General's Office was. Gray (also) said his defense would have pointed to others' guilt and shown a connection to law enforcement.

However the Muskogee Phoenix was not so kind. In a copyrighted story titled "Not Office Material," The Phoenix led with this broadside, "Richard Gray’s embezzlement case may have been dismissed, but that doesn’t make Gray qualified for office," and continued "However, one thing is clear — if Gray runs for office again, which he said he might, voters ought to remember not the dismissed charges, but his record." (Link to story HERE.)

Apparently not satisfied with the hell this man and his family have already been through, the Phoenix obviously wants to drive a stake through the heart of Gray's career should he dare to try to return to public life. I guess The Phoenix expected him to slink out of town in disgrace and take a job as night janitor someplace far away.

I don't know what happened in the Wagoner County DA's office and I don't think The Muskogee Phoenix does either. Things happen in a court house that civilians will never understand. But, I do know the judge who dismissed Gray's case, Michael Claver. He is an ex-cop and an ex-ADA. He has a reputation for being a law and order judge that is tough on drug defendants. Claver said that this was the first time he had ever taken a case away from a jury but felt sure that they would have reached the same conclusion given the evidence presented.

In this case, Gray has been cleared in a court of law and deserves the right to get on with his life without mean spirited, partisan sniping by the region's most influential newspaper.

Same Sex Marriage = Persecution

2008-06-11T08:11:00.003-05:00

The following is an edited version of an article appearing in this weeks National Catholic Register. The full article can be found HERE.

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Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ and the Persecution of Civil Society

BY JENNIFER ROBACK MORSE

June 8-14, 2008 Issue | Posted 6/3/08 at 10:48 AM

Advocates of same-sex “marriage” present the idea as a step forward for tolerance and respect. But recent developments place that interpretation very much in doubt.

Legalizing same-sex “marriage” is not a stand-alone policy, independent of all the other activities of the state. Once governments assert that same-sex unions are the equivalent of marriage, those governments must defend and enforce a whole host of other social changes.

Unfortunately, these government-enforced changes conflict with a wide array of ordinary liberties, including religious freedom and ordinary private property rights.

It began with the persecution of Catholic Charities in Boston. The archdiocese eventually closed down its adoption program, because the state of Massachusetts insisted that every adoption agency in the state must allow same-sex couples to adopt.

Recently, a Methodist organization in New Jersey lost part of its tax-exempt status because it refused to allow two lesbian couples to use their facility for a civil union ceremony. In Quebec, a Mennonite school was informed that it must conform to the official provincial curriculum, which includes teaching homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.

At last report, the Mennonites were considering leaving the province rather than permit the imposition of the state-sponsored curriculum on their children.

And recently, a wedding photographer in New Mexico faces a hearing with the state’s Human Rights Commission because she declined the business of a lesbian couple. She didn’t want to take photos of their commitment ceremony.

The underlying pattern is unmistakable. Legalizing same-sex “marriage” has brought in its wake state regulation of other parts of society. The problem is sometimes presented as an issue of religious freedom, and so, in part, it is. But the issue runs deeper than religious freedom.

McGill University professor Douglas Farrow argues in his book A Nation of Bastards that redefining marriage allows the government to colonize all of civil society.

If same-sex couples can marry each other, they should be allowed to adopt. Anyone who says otherwise is acting against the policy of the state. If same-sex couples can have civil unions, then denying them the use of any facility they want for their ceremony amounts to unlawful discrimination. When the state says that same sex couples are equivalent to opposite-sex couples, school curriculum will inevitably have to support this claim. (snip) ....

The state must create parentage for the same-sex couple. For the opposite-sex couple, the state merely recognizes parentage.

In her essay in The Meaning of Marriage, Seana Sugrue argues that the state must coddle and protect same-sex “marriage” in ways that opposite-sex marriage does not require.

Precisely because same-sex unions are not the same as opposite-sex marriage, the state must intervene to make people believe (or at least make them act as if they believe) that the two types of unions are equivalent.

Public schools in California are soon going to be required to be “gay friendly.” A doctor has been sued because she didn’t want to perform an artificial insemination on a lesbian couple. A private school is in trouble for disciplining two female students for kissing. All in the name of supporting the rights of same-sex couples to “equality” with straight couples.

The fact that opposite- and same-sex couples are different in significant ways means that there will always be scope for the state to expand its reach into more and more private areas of more and more people’s lives.

Perhaps some people think it is okay to shut down Catholic adoption agencies, because the Catholics have it coming to them: The Church’s enemies are many. Perhaps some people don’t care for Methodists, and don’t care whether they lose their tax-exempt status.

But the Mennonites? These are the most inoffensive people on the planet. They have been pacifists for centuries. Their continued existence here in North America is a testimony to the strength of our ideals of religious tolerance and pluralism, in all the best senses of those terms. But now, in the name of equality of same-sex couples, the Mennonites are being driven out of Quebec.

Perhaps you think people have a natural civil right to marry the person of their choosing. But can you really force yourself to believe that wedding photography is a civil right?

Maybe you believe that same-sex couples are entitled to have children, somehow. But is any doctor they might encounter required to inseminate them?

Advocates of same-sex “marriage” insist that theirs is a modest reform: a mere expansion of marriage to include people currently excluded. But the price of same-sex “marriage” is a reduction in tolerance for everyone else, and an expansion of the power of the state.

Jennifer Roback Morse is the senior fellow in economics at the Acton Institute and the author of Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village, newly reissued in paperback.

The System Isn't Working ...

2008-06-10T08:40:00.008-05:00

Recently, Judge Robin Cauthron of the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma granted a temporary injunction halting enforcement of key provisions of House Bill 1804 stating that opponents of HB 1804 stood a strong likelihood of success in their lawsuit challenging the popular legislation's constitutionality. Ironically, this was done in the same week that President George Bush issued an executive order calling for almost identical provisions for Federal contractors.

And, Oklahoma's Defense of Marriage Act and Constitutional Amendment, passed by seventy six percent of Oklahomans, has been under legal attack since its passage. These legal challenges continue despite the fact that the language of Oklahoma's DOMA very closely tracks similar federal legislation which has been held constitutional to date.

You have to ask yourself at some point, why bother? Oklahoma voters can spend vast amounts of time and money electing good legislators. They can then spend even more time and money shepherding good bills through the legislature. But, that is not the end of the story. If the money and legal talent is not available to support the inevitable legal challenges to that legislation then all of the time and money has been wasted. Make no mistake, powerful political and business forces are at work to defeat H.B. 1804. Powerful social and political forces are at work to defeat Oklahoma's DOMA. They are both literally pouring money into very powerful law firms to achieve their goals. And, they are winning.

And, not to be outdone by the courts, Governor Brad Henry vetoed Rep. Sally Kern's legislation which would have codified into Oklahoma state law U.S. constitutional protections for religious students in public schools. This legislation, patterned after successful litigation in Texas, was designed to prevent unnecessary litigation on religious rights issues that have already been decided by the Federal courts.

Inexplicably, Henry vetoed the bill on the grounds that it would cause more litigation rather than prevent it. What Henry's veto actually did was assure that every Oklahoma case would have to be litigated for a Christian student to exercise civil rights already granted to them by the U.S. Constitution and existing federal court decisions. But, (1) there are few Christian civil rights attorneys and no Christian civil rights firms in Oklahoma; (2) the expenses of civil rights litigation are out of reach for almost all Oklahoma citizens; and (3) the costs of travel, long travel times and poor airline connections make Oklahoma an unattractive venue for this type of suit by national Christian civil rights firms who work pro-bono. And, on the other side of the fence, the ACLU, the organization usually responsible for threats of litigation against a school district should a Christian decide to speak up there, has just secured a new funding package in excess of two hundred million dollars, much of it to be spent on cases just like this. So, what Governor Henry actually did was ensure that the liberal, ACLU interpretation of the First Amendment will be followed in Oklahoma regardless of court decisions to the contrary and thus enact a defacto denial of existing constitutional rights to religious public school students.

As of this moment, June 10, 2008, it is totally facetious to expect that any act of the Oklahoma legislature will actually become law if it is found offensive by liberal political or large corporate commercial interests. These people know how to work the system as it actually exists. The political system as we know it isn't working for conservative causes. It's time for conservatives to recognize that fact and start acting accordingly.

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Postcript: From the Family Research Council, June 11, 2008:

The heartland is poised to get some religious heartburn, courtesy of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and mega-donor George Soros. The organization best known for suing its way to Christian suppression has its eyes on some prime conservative real estate in its $335 million local expansion. Knowing that the biggest battles may soon be fought on the smallest scales, these agents of social injustice plan to "build a civil liberties infrastructure in the middle of the country," bringing with it a radical agenda of homosexual rights, unlimited abortion, the extinction of the traditional family, and secularism. Hoping to add new offices in the battleground states of Michigan, Texas, Florida, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, and Tennessee, the ACLU has already raised the majority of the funding needed to accomplish its national campaign. With overflowing bank accounts, taxpayer dollars from attorney fees in Establishment Clause cases, and offices in key red states, the ACLU will be a formidable force. The organization's executive director, Anthony Romero, wasn't coy about the far Left's intent. "If Republicans lose control of Congress and the White House, we can be sure the religious right will be much more active on the state level--our work will be critical there." By "our work," Romero must have been referring to the ACLU's efforts to persecute Christians and bully Americans into abandoning their moral beliefs. Now that Soros aims on bringing legal intimidation to our backyards, it is vital that we respond by stepping up our efforts. As the ACLU goes on the prowl in your state, please consider how you can help FRC fight back. To protect your hometown from the ACLU's family and faith onslaught, donate today at www.frc.org.

Judge Graves Concerned About Homosexual Agenda In Changes to Code of Judicial Conduct

2008-06-09T04:49:00.008-05:00

Oklahoma City District Judge Bill Graves has spoken out on proposed changes to the Oklahoma Code of Judicial Conduct stating:

"These policies are not based on laws enacted by Congress or the State Legislature, but on proposals of the liberal, pro-homosexual American Bar Association,"

A link to his letter to the Oklahoma Bar Association Bench & Bar Committee is HERE. A link to coverage of the letter is in the Journal of the American Bar Association is HERE. A link to Associated Press coverage of the letter can be found HERE.

This is really not a new subject. Other versions of the same issue have been playing out for months or even years. The Court Clerk of the Cherokee Nation has been involved in rancorous litigation concerning an improperly granted Cherokee same-sex marriage license for several years. A Tulsa Judge resigned from the bench after mistakenly granting a same sex divorce that generated litigation currently before the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Similar legal battles have been going on across the nation in other states for the past several years.

Last week, so many California court employees in some counties voiced objection to performing or participating in so called gay civil marriages that some of those counties have said they cannot offer the "reasonable accommodation" these religious employees are legally entitled to. While there is almost certain to be lengthy and rancorous litigation on this issue, an adverse ruling by the California courts will mean that religious employees of the California court system who cannot in good conscience participate in so called "gay marriages" will be excluded from employment. In short, there will be a defacto religious test for California court employees.

Further, some California county governments are reportedly making plans to cease performing marriages or issuing licenses. This is also not new. Religious leaders of the Cherokee Nation, facing the same situation last year, proposed a referendum rescinding the power of the Cherokee tribal government to grant marriage licenses if the Cherokee Courts rule in favor of gay marriage.

Seventy six percent of Oklahoma voters voiced disapproval of so called gay marriage by voting for Oklahoma's Defense of Marriage Act and related marriage amendment. Under most people's understanding of democratic government by majority rule, that should have been the end of the issue. However, in Lawrence v. Texas, the United States Supreme Court effectively said that the will of the people is not a consideration when it comes to the homosexual agenda holding:

...the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice...

Frightening words. Very frightening words. In a letter to Thomas Ritchie, Dec. 25, 1820 Thomas Jefferson said:

“A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism (mistake or absurdity), at least in a republican government.”

* * * * * *

Related Posts:

Comments Before OBA Bench & Bar Committee Regarding the Proposed Code of Judicial Conduct. Link HERE.

Judge Bill Graves - Connect the Dots. Link HERE.

Judge Bill Graves - Connect the Dots Part II. Link HERE.

On Church Myths, Deductions and Elections ...

2008-06-07T11:08:00.011-05:00

I have been involved in an interesting discussion with my fellow Christian civil rights attorneys about the tax exempt status of so-called “sovereign” and/or "unorganized" or "unincorporated" churches that choose not to apply for 501(c)(3) tax exempt status.

It is absolutely true that there is no legal requirement that a body of believers acquire any government license or legal recognition to meet and associate. Christians are free to meet, associate and speak as they choose without any special approval by a government agency. But, tax exempt status is another matter.

While the IRS does not require churches to apply for tax exempt aka 501(c)(3) status, it does not follow that the church is not obliged to follow the tax code, especially concerning tax exempt status and charitable deductions. 501(c)(3) applications to the IRS simply authorize the IRS to issue a letter recognizing and clarifying an already existing state of existence for churches who choose to be tax exempt. However, the fact that a church has not applied for 501(c)(3) exemption does not mean that it has “opted out” of compliance with the tax code. Rather, 501(c)(3) status is automatically imputed to churches who accept tax exempt status without application.

The Internal Revenue Code, including § 501(c)(3), is part of the United States Code and is a generally applicable law of the land. The constitutional rights to free speech, free association and the free exercise of religion do not exempt churches or individual citizens from obedience to the generally applicable law of the land. Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872, 881. While Smith specifically addresses obedience of the tax code in the text of that decision, a subsequent decision, U.S. v. Indianapolis Baptist Temple, 224 F.3d 627 (7th Cir. 2000, cert denied. US 2001) made it abundantly clear that churches are not exempt from the tax code, holding:

… there is no basis under either the Free Exercise Clause or the Establishment Clause for the argument that neutral, generally applicable, minimally intrusive tax laws (like the ones at issue here) cannot be applied to religious organizations.

This decision also made it abundantly clear that the courts and the IRS are free to treat a church as the legal entity that closest describes its operation regardless of the church’s organizational statements to the contrary:

… IBT takes issue with the district court's characterization of it as an unincorporated religious society under Indiana law. IBT contends that it is a "New Testament Church," not an unincorporated religious society, and that by characterizing it as such an entity, the district court "established" a state church and imposed on IBT a form of worship contrary to its beliefs. The district court did neither of these things. It simply described the legal (not religious) nature of an already existing church

So, to clear up a couple of popular myths about church organizations, churches are not exempt from generally applicable laws of the land and those churches which accept federal tax exempt status are 501(c)(3) exempt organizations in the eyes of the law whether they have formally applied for that status or not. Further, the courts are free to treat them as 501(c)(3) organizations for the purposes of determining their eligibility for tax exempt status and may also treat them as the legal business entity (usually an unincorporated association) that most closely describes their method of operation regardless of their organizational statements to the contrary.

While generally, a donor's receipt provided by the church that includes the church name, address, the donor's name, amount donated and a statement that it was an exchange for intangible religious benefits is sufficient to meet the legal standard for a religious charitable donation, it is also true that:

… deductions are a matter of legislative grace, and that taxpayers must satisfy the specific statutory requirements for the deductions they claim. Davis v. Commissioner [Dec. 40,564], 81 T.C. 806, 815 (1983), affd. without published opinion 767 F.2d 931 (9th Cir. 1985). Taxpayers bear the burden of proving their entitlement to the deductions they claim. Welch v. Helvering [3 USTC ¶ 1164], 290 U.S. 111 (1933); Rule 142(a). A deduction is allowable under the provisions of section 170 when a contribution or gift is made to a qualified organization …

Bullock v.Commissioner, 56 T.C.M. (CCH) 636, T.C. Memo. 1988-526.

In order to be entitled to a deduction under section 170(a), petitioner must prove that the Church qualified under section 170(c)(2).

Beall v. Commissioner, 46 T.C.M. (CCH) 74., T.C. Memo. 1983-252. In short, for the deduction to be allowable by the donor, the church must conform to the Internal Revenue Code provisions for 501(c)(3) organizations. Disallowed deductions in turn create a second level of scrutiny and accountability for the church by the both the donor and the IRS. While there is usually no penalty for the disallowed deduction to the church, only to the donor, other considerations do come into play. The following is a text book example of actual fraud taken from a pastor education program taught by the Christian Law Association:

A pastor declares that “all contributions are tax deductible because the church meets the qualifications (for tax exempt status) of IRC § 501 (c)(3) even though the pastor has no idea if the church qualifies for federal tax exempt status. The donor is audited, the church is deficient in its § 501(c)(3) qualifications and the donors (deductions for) contributions are denied resulting in additional taxes and penalties to the donor.

This legal scenario is going to be very important in the weeks and months to follow in that both presidential candidates are firm advocates of much more restrictive enforcement of the Internal Revenue Code concerning religious organizations. We have already seen examples both nationally and here in Oklahoma of opposition political groups monitoring the activities of conservative churches for the purpose of challenging their tax exempt status. A maliciously donated twenty dollar check in the offering plate could cost tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees as well as cause great embarrassment to both the church and its staff. Recognizing this, several national Christian civil rights legal firms are gearing up for litigation on this issue.

In actuality, tax exempt churches possess much broader legal rights to expression on political, legislative and social issues than most pastors are comfortable exercising. Pastors and church people alike should make themselves familiar with these rights and exercise them. The Alliance Defense Fund issued a “Dear Pastor” letter in 2006 which clearly outlines these rights. A link to that letter is HERE. But, those constitutional rights have limits. Liberty Counsel has produced an excellent checklist of political activities tax exempt organizations may and may not do. A link to that list is found HERE and an excellent letter can be found HERE. But, be careful to read the fine print. Many activities are limited to the 5% "insubstantial part of the operation as a whole" ceiling under previous cases and rulings. And of course, there is substantial disagreement with these positions. The position of Americans United for Separation of Church and State can be found HERE. Notice that there is no substantial disagreement on what the law says about political activities by tax exempt organizations only broad differences in its application.

Reading all of this together, it is obvious that: (1) pastors and churches have far broader constitutional rights to political expression under the IRC than they have been led to believe; (2) good defenses can be offered in most cases where problems arise with the IRS; but (3) the surest way for a church to lose their case with the IRS is to deny that the tax code applies to them if they have accepted tax exempt status.

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has made it very clear that there is only one way for a church to regularly and substantially participate in a broad range of social, political and legislative matters without IRC § 501(c)(3) regulation and that is to forego tax exempt status. This was pointedly driven home by an historic Tulsa case, Christian Echoes v. United States, 470 F.2d 849, 857 (10^th Cir. 1973) which holds:

In light of the fact that tax exemption is a privilege, a matter of grace rather than right, we hold that the limitations contained in Section 501(c)(3) withholding exemption from nonprofit corporations do not deprive Christian Echoes of its constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech. The taxpayer may engage in all such activities without restraint, subject, however, to withholding of the exemption or, in the alternative, the taxpayer may refrain from such activities and obtain the privilege of exemption.

This ruling places churches that teach that the government has no jurisdiction over their activities in a very difficult position both legally and doctrinally. This position, while constitutionally and theologically correct in my opinion, has nevertheless been eroded by subsequent court decisions to the point that it is probably indefensible in court. And, even if the government had no jurisdiction over the church itself, there can still be no argument that it has jurisdiction over the tax returns and deductions of the individual donors.

I believe the biblical answer to this dilemma is found in Matthew 17:24 et. seq. where Peter was asked if Jesus paid the temple tax. Jesus was the Son of God and a rabbi. He was doubly exempt from paying this tax. But, to assert his exemption would have presented a stumbling block to many who did not recognize his status. Consequently, he paid the tax to prevent it from compromising his message on other more important issues.

Peter and Jesus had no choice, in that situation they had to pay the tax or face the controversy. American taxpayers and churches do have a choice. They can comply with the tax code and operate within its limitations or they can refuse tax exempt status. And, the Alliance Defense Fund, Liberty Counsel and others are now offering a third practical option for some churches, litigation to clarify the allowable activities of tax exempt churches. I fully support this effort. But, to accept this third option, you have to admit that the tax code applies to tax exempt churches.

It may be time for some churches to forego tax exempt status in order to free themselves from the government scrutiny associated with §501(c)(3) compliance. Churches that are very active in political and social causes could save themselves a lot of grief by simply foregoing the deduction and speaking freely. Granted, they would be submitting themselves and their donors to an unfair and probably unconstitutional financial disadvantage. But, they would also be exercising the same loving deference that Jesus did in Matthew 17:24 et. seq. by not allowing their tax exempt status to get in the way of the larger mission.

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A very interesting article on this subject quoting several prominent Tulsa tax attorneys can be found HERE.

Sanity Prevails In Marine Corp Haditha Trial

2008-06-05T15:55:00.006-05:00

The following is a press release from the Thomas More Law Center:

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Marine Acquitted of Haditha Charges;
Judge Defers Decision on Crucial Motion and Delays Trial in LtCol Chessani Case

Thursday, June 5, 2008

ANN ARBOR, MI – Last night, a jury panel of seven officers acquitted Marine 1st Lieutenant Andrew Grayson of all charges involving accusations that he covered-up the killings of 24 Iraqis in Haditha on November 19, 2005. The verdict caused spectators in courtroom on the vast Camp Pendleton Marine facility to erupt in cheers.

After his acquittal, Lt Grayson made comments about Lt Col Jeffrey Chessani, one of the two remaining defendants in the Haditha cases, saying he was “one of the most steadfast men… He led by example and he knew the difference between right and wrong.” Lt Col Chessani is being defended by the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center, observed, “The government ordered these Marines to the front lines, they ordered them to attack the insurgents… Marines, risking their lives, followed those orders without hesitation; their reward ─ criminal prosecution. There must be some righteous person in the chain of command that will say ‘enough is enough.’”

Earlier in the week, in another courtroom on the same Marine facility as Grayson’s trial, two days of motion hearings were concluded in the government’s case against LtCol Chessani, one of the Marine’s most effective combat leaders and the highest ranking officer charged in the Haditha incident. In that case, Military Judge, Col Steven Folsom deferred his decision on a crucial defense motion to June 16th, and delayed the actual trial until July 21st.

In May 2008, Col Folsom ruled that he found evidence of unlawful command influence (UCI). Courts consider UCI the mortal enemy of military justice. The judge’s finding was based upon the evidence that Generals Mattis and Helland, who controlled the disposition of LtCol Chessani’s case, were impermissibly influenced by Marine lawyer Col John Ewers, one of the investigators of the Haditha incident from the beginning. He was permitted to attend at least 25 closed-session meetings in which Chessani’s case was discussed.

As a result of that ruling, the burden shifted to prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that (1) the facts alleged by the defense are untrue; (2) the facts alleged do not constitute unlawful command influence; or (3) the unlawful command influence will not affect the proceedings. In short, court decisions on unlawful command influence require the military judge to avoid even the “appearance of this evil” in his courtroom.

To meet their burden, earlier this week, prosecutors presented the testimony of General Mattis and Col Ewers. Conspicuously absent was the testimony of General Helland.

In what might be a hint of his ruling, earlier in the week Col Folsom asked what remedies to the UCI problem both sides recommended. Robert Muise, one of the TMLC defense attorneys, asked the military judge to dismiss the case with prejudice (meaning the case could not be recharged against LtCol Chessani). The prosecution asked for a less severe remedy.

The crucial Unlawful Command Influence motion (click here for Motion), which was the focus of this week’s hearing, was filed by the Thomas More Law Center. Law Center attorneys Robert Muise and Brian Rooney, both former Marines, wrote and argued the Unlawful Command Influence motion on which yesterday’s decision is based. The two TMLC attorneys, along with two detailed Marine lawyers, LtCol Jon Shelburne and Captain Jeffrey King, are defending LtCol Chessani.

The criminal charges against LtCol Chessani stem from a house-to-house, room-by-room battle four of his enlisted Marines engaged in on November 19, 2005 after being ambushed by insurgents in the town of Haditha, Iraq. Even though LtCol Chessani immediately reported the events of that day to his superiors, including the death of 15 noncombatant civilians caught in the crossfire, nobody in LtCol Chessani’s chain of command believed there was any wrongdoing on behalf of the Marines.

However, months later, a Time magazine story instigated by an insurgent propaganda agent, caused Pentagon officials to order the largest investigation in the history of the Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS). As a result, LtCol Chessani, now faces dismissal (an officer’s equivalent of a dishonorable discharge), loss of retirement, and imprisonment of up to 3 years.

According to press reports, 1st Lt Grayson's attorney, Joseph Casas, said he believed the verdict could influence pending prosecutions. “I think it sets the tone for the overall whirlwind Haditha has been. It's been a botched investigation from the get-go, ” he said. “I believe in the end all of the so-called Haditha Marines who still have to face trial will be exonerated.”

The Thomas More Law Center defends and promotes the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life through litigation, education, and related activities. It does not charge for its services. The Law Center is supported by contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations, and is recognized by the IRS as a section 501(c)(3) organization. You may reach the Thomas More Law Center at (734) 827-2001 or visit our website at www.thomasmore.org

PSO Drops the Ball Again

2008-06-03T09:53:00.004-05:00

For the second time in six months, I am sitting a coffee shop trying to do business while I wait for the utility companies to get my home office back in operation. It is frustrating and frankly I am quite angry about it.

I am also somewhat mystified. I have lived in Tulsa on and off for most of my adult life. My wife and I have been in Metro Tulsa since 1980 this time around. The weather has not gotten worse. Oklahoma is notorious for weather extremes. Ice storms like this winters' and wind storms like this weeks' occur on a rare but regular basis. Every decade or so we go through a period of very unsettled weather. But, in past decades we have not had the number or length of power and other utility outages that we have in the past couple of years. I cannot remember a time in Tulsa when we went for days without power.

This leads to the obvious question. What has changed? The utility companies. Rates have gone up consistently at the same time service levels have dropped. This winter, a crew from Southern Oklahoma fixed the broken power pole in my neighbor's back yard about a week after it went down. They did it, not because PSO had dispatched them, but rather because we flagged them down and told them about our elderly neighbor who had had no heat for a week.

These very decent small town utility workers had the equipment and the crew to replace a pole and restore power and they just did it. It wasn't rocket science. People, equipment, placement. Very straightforward. Just doing their job. Maybe that's what AEP/PSO needs now, enough crews and equipment to respond to their customer's needs when things go south.

AEP/PSO's emergency response plans, field staffing levels, profits and executive salaries need to be examined in light of two disastrous but entirely predictable power outages in six months. I sincerely hope that someone from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission reads this.

Bad News for McCain and Dem's Too ...

2008-06-01T07:37:00.002-05:00

Last night, my wife and I visited one of our usual haunts, a diner on Tulsa's near Northside that features live music and a little dance floor (sort of). Frick and Frack were doing their usual pretty good job of having a good time with their music and helping other people do the same. There wasn't much of a crowd, just a couple of tables of regulars and about thirty people in one party for a family reunion of some sort. I was surprised when the one I call Frick, the keyboard player decided to tell joke. This is the story he told:

John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama were all in an airplane traveling across the country. While they were passing over a small city, McCain spoke up and said, "I could throw a thousand dollar bill out of the plane right now and make somebody down there very happy." Not to be outdone, Hillary said, "I could throw ten hundred dollar bills out of the plane right now and make several people happy." Sensing a movement for change, Obama piped in: "I could throw a hundred ten dollar bills out of the plane and make a lot people a little happier." The two flight attendants had been listening at a respectful distance. After a moment one of them whispered to the other, "Yeah, and we could throw all three of these losers out of the plane and make the whole country happy."

There was a roar of laughter and then small conversations broke out among the tables. I distinctly heard one blue collar lady say that she was going to have to do a write in or something this year. I didn't feel like intruding to tell her that a write in in Oklahoma invalidates your ballot.

The place where this story was told is definitely blue collar in a neighborhood where folks have a lot more to worry about than politics. When politics are discussed in places like this, there are usually pretty solid party line divisions. But last night, in this place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, there was a profound cynicism toward the whole electoral process that is unusual in people of that social and economic class.

I am afraid that this is indicative of real troubles ahead in the next presidential election. We may have an election that is decided by party activists alone because the political parties have, by default or design, fielded such a poor a selection of candidates that nobody, even Joe Sixpack, is willing to vote for them.

Sanity Finally Prevails in Texas Child Seizure Case

2008-05-30T14:22:00.004-05:00

The Texas Supreme Court has upheld an appeals court ruling vacating the seizure of four hundred children. The ruling does not end the parent's troubles with the Texas CPS or answer any of the difficult questions that arose about the religious organization. But, it does show that Texas judges are capable of rendering a logical verdict without bowing to political correctness.

The most frightening aspect of this whole misadventure has been the silence of attorney and civil rights groups. It would seem that if the accusations are vile enough, the group odd enough and law enforcement determined enough, too many American attorneys are all too willing to suspend the U.S. Constitution.

As the events were breaking, I was involved in a online discussion with a group of civil rights attorneys. Many of that group were highly critical of those of us who questioned the evidence (now proven to be non-existent) and the process (now proven to be unconstitutional). That heated but important conversation was soon terminated by higher authority within the hosting organization.

One courageous attorney in that conversation was blistering in his criticism of Texas Southern Baptist Churches who loaned buses to law enforcement to transport the detainees. Now we have learned that the State of Texas asked Baptist Family and Child Services to provide command and control services in operating the detention centers (aka concentration camps). Link HERE. This same attorney observed that those Mormons will remember for the the rest of their lives that the people who call themselves the true church and them cultists helped the state haul them away into captivity and that the SBC and its people may well get a deserved hosing in Federal Court right along with the state officials who violated these people's civil rights so badly.

The Texas Supreme Court Opinion can be found HERE. Note that there were three partial dissents with those justices concurring in part but suggesting there were grounds to remove a few pubescent girls. Link HERE. And to make sure that the everyone in the legal community that wouldn't speak up about this travesty of justice until the courts returned sanity to the situation gets the point, read "The Civil Rights Watchdog That Didn't Bark" HERE and "Appeals Court Ruling Makes Blogging About YFZ Raid Safe" HERE.

On Difficult Lawyers - Part II

2008-05-28T13:40:00.005-05:00

In a recent post, I reported how OKC Federal Judge Vickie Miles LaGrange struck a blow for the good guys in our profession by a very clever sanction against an attorney that she decided had behaved badly in a case before her court. Link HERE. However, it would appear that this gentleman's troubles before the bench were not over.

The following took place in a state court case this same attorney and insurance company were involved in:

¶5 On January 28, 2003, the passenger's counsel contacted the liability examiner and requested the $15,000 limits of the UIM policy. On January 28, 2003, the liability examiner settled the liability claim for the $10,000 policy limit. Throughout these negotiations, the passenger's counsel often mistakenly used the liability claim number when referring to the UIM claim and vice versa. When negotiations on the UIM claim were not fruitful, on March 26, 2003, Denise Thompson, the UIM examiner's supervisor (the supervisor), called the passenger's counsel and offered $2000 to settle the UIM claim. On April 3, 2003, the passenger's counsel counter-offered to settle the UIM claim for $14,000. On May 6, 2003, the supervisor offered $3,000 to settle the UIM claim, the full amount at which the insurer had valued the claim.

¶6 The passenger then deemed the $3000 an "undisputed amount" and demanded payment of the $3000 without settlement of the claim. The insurer refused, and on July 10, 2003, the passenger brought an action in district court alleging breach of contract and bad faith for the insurer's refusal to pay the "undisputed amount" and improper "dual representation" for the insurer's alleged leveraging of the liability and UIM claims against each other to prevent a fair valuation of either. The insurer moved for partial summary judgment on the issues of bad faith. The trial court granted the insurer's motions on both issues, leaving only the breach of contract claim to be litigated.

¶7 On September 9, 2005, the trial court ordered that the parties attend mediation pursuant to the District Court Mediation Act, 12 O.S. §§1821-1825, (the Mediation Act). On September 23, 2005, the parties attended mediation, but could not reach a settlement. On October 17, 2005, before the trial began before District Judge Tom A. Lucas, the passenger submitted motions in limine seeking to prohibit the insurer's counsel from: 1) mentioning collateral sources; 2) eliciting testimony from the investigating officer; and 3) suggesting or implying that the passenger's counsel fostered perjury from the passenger's treating physician. The parties argued the motions in chambers, and the trial court granted all three motions. During opening statements, Gerard F. Pignato, counsel for the insurer, stated that the investigating officer determined that there were no injuries sustained by the passenger. The passenger objected and the trial court sustained the objection and advised the jury to disregard counsel's statements about the investigating officer. Later in the opening statement, the insurer's counsel claimed that the passenger's expert medical witness "churned fees" and agreed to testify as "part of the deal." The trial court called counsel to the bench and advised the passenger's counsel that if he moved for a mistrial, it would be granted. The passenger's counsel so moved, and the trial court declared a mistrial.

¶8 On November 28, 2005, the passenger moved for sanctions against the insurer for its attorney's conduct in the first trial. The passenger also based his motion for sanctions on what he considered an unreasonably low settlement offer made by the insurer during mediation, the amount of which he disclosed in the first sentence of his motion for sanctions. On November 30, 2005, the insurer responded by moving for sanctions against the passenger and his counsel, Michael W. Phillips, for revealing the settlement amount offered in mediation, which the insurer alleged violated the Mediation Act.¹ On December 21, 2005, District Judge William C. Hetherington, Jr. awarded $2500 in sanctions to the insurer against the passenger's counsel, and awarded attorney fees to the passenger against the insurer.

Taking inventory of the above we find several interesting tidbits .... a lowball offer to settle far below the actual value of the claim ... an attempt to "leverage" the claims against each other to reduce the value of both and ... and an obviously retaliatory motion for sanctions against the opposing attorneys who did not go along. Amazingly, the trial court, while granting attorneys fees against the insurer, at the same time levied a $2500.00 sanction against the insured's attorney. However, on appeal the Oklahoma Supreme Court did not agree:

Imposition of sanctions under these circumstances was premature and excessive. Because the trial court had no authority to sanction the passenger's counsel under §2011(C)(a) and an order of sanctions under the circumstances of the cause was an excessive extension of the trial court's inherent powers, the trial court abused its discretion by sanctioning the passenger's counsel.

The case is Garnett v. GEICO, 2008 OK 43. Link HERE.

Memorial Day

2008-05-25T06:10:00.011-05:00

It is Memorial Day, 2008. This morning, U.S. troops are deployed in a vicious occupation/"peace action" in Iraq and an ongoing counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. This is the longest running "hot" war the United States has ever fought, 1893 days, and the second longest combat engagement of troops, surpassed only by Viet Nam where the first several years were compromised of small "adviser" forces only. This war has many critics, some of them honorable people, such as former Assistant Secretary of the Navy James Webb, a decorated Marine combat veteran.

But, this is a day to put aside criticism and even analysis and instead simply honor our fallen dead. American troops do not make foreign policy. They are the blunt end of it who go where they are told and obey their orders. They put themselves in harms way so that we can be safe. The fact that they have been cynically misused for political purposes on occasion does not detract from their valor and sacrifice.

So, as I do every year, I am going to post perhaps the best Memorial Day/Veteran's Day poem ever written. It was written by Sgt. Joyce Kilmer of the "Fighting 69th" of the 42nd (Rainbow) Infantry Division, a unit of New York National Guard. Kilmer was a world class poet and scholar. He did not have to serve. Rather, he voluntarily left his family and comfortable position to serve his country and his fellow man. He was a devout Catholic and much of his work reflected his deeply abiding faith. Kilmer was killed in action July 30, 1918 while on a reconnaissance mission during the Battle of the Marne.

Memorial Day
"Dulce et decorum est"

The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
Of men-at-arms who come to pray.

The roses blossom white and red
On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
And martial music cleaves the sky.

Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,
They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom and the Right.

May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie beneath this sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
At last the accolade of God.

In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid,
The Prince of Peace . . . Who brought a sword.

McCain REFUSES to Meet with Dobson, REJECTS Key Evangelical Endorsements But APPEARS on Ellen Degeneres Show

2008-05-24T06:51:00.004-05:00

I cannot imagine a way that a presidential candidate could do anything else to show his contempt for the religious conservative base of the Republican party than John McCain has.

First, he has stiff armed powerful evangelical leaders such as James Dobson by refusing to even meet with them. See NewsMax article McCain Rebuffs Dobson HERE.

Second, he has rejected the endorsement of two powerful evangelical leaders who had been convinced to endorse him. He rejected the endorsement of Rev. John Hagee because of his previous statements critical of the Catholic church. See Breitbart.com article HERE. And, he has rejected the endorsement of Rev. Rod Parsley because of his strong anti-Muslim stand. See ABC News Article HERE.

But third, while stiff arming Dobson and rejecting the endorsements of Christian pastors whose views he found embarassing, McCain had no problem appearing on the Ellen Degeneres show and being extraordinarily deferential to her about their alleged difference of opinion on so called gay marriage. McCain takes the moderate GOP approach first offered by Bush that gay s should be granted same sex marital benefits under different legal theories such as the right to contract. Here is the video clip of the McCain appearance:

The only cogent reason I have been given to vote GOP this presidential election is that a McCain presidency would be better for we Christians and our causes than any other candidate so we must vote for the lesser of evils to prevent the greater evil Hillary or Obama. Well, given McCain's previous attempt to enact laws that would silence the religious community in the political marketplace of ideas and his treatment of evangelicals BEFORE HE was elected, I can't agree . I see no difference and frankly, the Dem's just might treat us a little better to try no to lose our votes in local and state elections because it is obvious that McCain doesn't care if he loses our our votes or not in the national elections.

As a matter of fact we have a very good example of how McCain would treat Evangelicals if he were elected. Former Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt was dismissed from the Naval service for praying in Jesus' name and holding traditional evangelical beliefs. Here is his description of how McCain's staff treated him when he went to them for help:

Sen. McCain refused to help me when I fought to pray "in Jesus’ name" as a Navy chaplain. When I walked into his office on Capitol Hill, two of his liberal staffers told me I should water down my prayers and stop praying "in Jesus’ name." McCain will surround himself with similar liberal appointees in key White House positions.

But, Klingenschmitt did not stop there:

In 2006, McCain was one of only three Republican senators to vote against defining marriage between one man and one woman. Why? McCain said: "I think that gay marriage should be allowed if there’s a ceremony kind of thing, if you wanna call it that, I don’t have any problem with that." No wonder Dr. James Dobson replied: "Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances."

McCain not only refused to participate in Janet Folger’s Values Voter Presidential Debate, he has repeatedly distanced himself from religious groups. He won the Republican nomination without faith-based voters. So, if he wins the White House, will he suddenly listen to our pleas? No chance! Only by treating ourselves with respect can we demand respect from others. Have we no dignity?

For several excellent reasons NOT to vote for McCain this fall see the rest of Klingenschmitt's blog entry HERE.

The Classic Dixie-crat - A Winning Formula for Oklahoma Democrats?

2008-05-21T05:35:00.009-05:00

Let me start by saying that I come from a Republican heritage. My grandmother was a Republican. Not a country club Republican by any means but rather a combination of a staunch anti-communist and an old woman with a long memory of the association between long dead local Little Dixie Democrat leaders and the Klan. This unusual situation had nothing to do with a particular love or hate of any race but rather was due to the fact that her husband, a socialist politician, had been driven out of the state by the Klan leaving her destitute in a sharecropper's shack with three small children and a crop in the field.

And, while she continued as a sharecropper during his terms in office, Grandma also thought that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a combination of a Communist and the Anti-Christ. She was so hard core Republican in a Yellow Dog Democrat district that my earliest memory involving an election also involved her being forced to take a literacy test, an unheard of insult for a white voter at the time, and Republican lawyers from the state GOP telling officious Little Dixie precinct workers that my grandmother was going to vote or there would be hell to pay for all concerned.

I have made no secret of my disappointment with the GOP for the last several election cycles. As a matter of fact, sadly, I no longer identify myself as a Republican. I am a Conservative. A strict constructionist TheoCon for you wonks. That puts me about forty miles to the RIGHT of the current RINO dominated GOP. I did not leave the GOP. The GOP left me. But having said that, it would still take a rim of ice on the shores of Hell to make me vote for anyone with a JackAss beside their name on the ballot.

But, the Democrats are not stupid. They realize that they have lost the South and they are going to have make accomodations to get it back. It is a pity John McCain isn't that flexible. This is a campaign ad that could make me think long and hard about voting for a Democrat if I lived in his district. The strategy behind it should be the GOP's worst nightmare.

Our New One Party Political System

2008-05-18T09:44:00.017-05:00

Several years ago, I was banned from the allegedly conservative Free Republic online political discussion group for criticizing President George Bush. I was banned for repeatedly saying that Bush and his NeoCon handlers were destroying the GOP as we know it and that we TheoCons would be better off revolting and even sitting out an election rather than allowing the party and ourselves to be driven into insignificance. That was several congressional election cycles ago and unfortunately, all of my dire predictions have come true and then some. Even the best conservative pundits such as Peggy Noonan are now predicting a GOP train wreck of massive proportions in the upcoming election:

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party. ….

… The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government – has passed. What two years ago would have been honorable and wise will now look craven. They're stuck.

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined "brand," as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership.

Pity Party, Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, Link HERE.

In the meanwhile, fresh on the heels of his public support of the recent California Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage, nominally Republican California Governor Arnold Schwartzengger is calling for a “re-branding” of the GOP:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger created shock and awe in the Republican Party when he warned years ago that the GOP was in danger of "dying at the box office" by failing to make the sale to a wide swath of voters.
... The answer for GOP presidential candidate John McCain: take a page out of the Schwarzenegger playbook and sell a product that is "counter" to the current GOP brand on issues like global warming, spending and even immigration reform. …
And the governor, in an interview with The Chronicle last week, had some candid advice and observations, not only about the GOP brand - but on McCain's efforts to expand his appeal to independents and disillusioned Democrats.

"The Republican idea is a great idea, but we can't go and get stuck with just the right wing," Schwarzenegger said. "Let's let the party come all the way to the center. Let those people be heard as much as the right. Let it be the big tent we've talked about. Let's invade and let's cross over that (political) center," he said. "The issues that they're talking about? Let them be our issues, and let the party be known for that."

The San Francisco Gate, May 18, 2008 link HERE:

So, the nominally GOP governor of one of the largest states in the nation, who is married to a Kennedy, is suggesting that the GOP not only move to the political center but move past it to the left in order to compete with the Democrats with their own positions. Forgive me for being naïve, but that sure sounds like a one party system to me. It’s just a question for voting the Red Social Democrats or the Blue Social Democrats.

All of my dire predictions have come true. The GOP access that Evangelicals prized so highly dried up during the Bush years to the point that McCain has stiff armed them entirely. He has been openly contemptuous of Evangelical GOP voters intelligence, relying upon the old and now discredited "poorly educated and easily led" and "where else do they have go to anyway?" strategies of years past. In the meanwhile, the GOP continues to lose key house and senate races, its public approval numbers are abysmal and the possibility of a GOP president getting anything done that conservatives want, even if he were miraculously elected, is almost nil under the current political conditions.

But, worst of all, the two parties have become politically indistinguishable to principled conservatives. The GOP has become, in its own words, a badly shop worn brand that is no longer attracting the numbers its "owners" need to stay in power.

Sometimes, you hate to be right. But, I was. And, in the immortal words of Bette Davis, “Fasten your seat belts boys and girls. It's going to be a bumpy ride.”

---------------------------------------------

Just in today from NewsMax:

MCCAIN COURTS LEFT WING BLOGGERS:

Republican John McCain’s campaign has begun holding regular conference calls with leftwing bloggers and blogs that focus on single issues such as healthcare and the environment.
On May 15, McCain held a conference call with bloggers including Greg Sargent of TPM Election Central, Kate Sheppard — a political reporter for the environmental Web site Grist.org — and Erin Kotecki, who blogs at BlogHer.com and The Huffington Post, according to Wired.com.
An earlier call included Med Gadget and other blogs devoted to healthcare issues.

Link to full story HERE.

MCCAIN STIFF ARMS EVANGELICALS - DOBSON:

Sunday, May 18, 2008 6:05 PM

By: Phil Brennan

Sen. John McCain's campaign has so far turned a deaf ear to invitations to meet with politically powerful evangelical leader Dr. James Dobson at his Focus on the Family headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., raising the possibility that the nation's sizable evangelical bloc will sit out the presidential race in November.

The move would all but assure the election of Sen. Barack Obama, columnist Robert Novak argues in a recent column.

Noting that Dobson has indicated he can't support McCain for president, Novak writes that Dobson's opposition to McCain "reflects continued resistance to the prospective presidential nominee among Christian conservatives who are unhappy with McCain's current positions on stem-cell research, immigration and global warming, not to mention his past sponsorship of campaign-finance reform."

But conservatives are surprised that, despite the differences between McCain and some key conservatives, McCain hasn't responded to their olive branches and sought meetings.

Link to full story HERE.

--------------------------

And this fresh in from Townhall.com:

GOP - GET BACK

The Republican Party is in distress. Doomsayers are everywhere. Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. Duncan complains that conservative, pro-life, pro-gun Democrats won three special elections by stealing GOP issues.
"We can't let the Democrats take our issues," Duncan told the New York Times. "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives and co-opt the middle and win these elections. We have to get the attention of our incumbents and candidates and make sure they understand this."
Democrats didn't steal your issues, sir. You abandoned them. Your party discarded them. Democrats simply engaged in dumpster harvesting.
Unable to win by labeling Democrats "liberals," Republicans don't know what to do. Labeling worked before. Why isn't it working now? The answer is that it only works in combination with superior ideas, which you then contrast to those of your "liberal" opponent. You can't do that credibly unless you have embraced those ideas and sought to implement them. Republicans traded in their ideas in favor of gaining and keeping power as their sole objective. The party wants credit for giving lip service to its abandoned ideology while it practices cave-in politics.
John McCain has promised to bring Democrats into his Cabinet and work with Democrats in Congress. Does that mean ideas don't matter? Does it mean that when Democrats disagree with him he will embrace their ideas just to get along? If so, why should voters vote Republican? They might as well vote for Democrats and get their liberalism straight-up.

GOP- Get Back, Cal Thomas, Townhall.com, May 20, 2008. Link to full column HERE.

And from William Rusher today:

So you will look high and low before finding a professional politician, in either party, who privately expects a Republican victory this fall -- either in the presidential election or in Congress. Realistically speaking, can anything be done about this? Probably not much. In all likelihood, this is going to be "a Democratic year." Still, there is no reason why the GOP has to watch the Democratic juggernaut descending on it like a deer transfixed in the headlights of an oncoming car.

Avoiding a Republican Rout in November, Townhall.com, May 20. 2008.

The Unfinished Grisham ...

2008-05-18T06:14:00.009-05:00

I was a John Grisham fan. Over the years I have been entertained, enlightened, challenged and even humbled by his work. His last book, a wonderfully researched piece of non-fiction, The Innocent Man, was thought provoking and shocking. Anyone who reads it will never look at the Oklahoma Justice System the same way again.

And, it is because I was a fan and because his work has been so good in the past that the failure of his current work, The Appeal, is so much more disappointing. My half read copy of it has been sitting on my nightstand for weeks. I have just about decided I will not finish it. And, I have also just about decided that I will sell it to my favorite used book store instead of keeping it, the first Grisham novel I have not kept.

The first half of The Appeal is classic Grisham, a small town tale of a giant toxic tort case. And, in classic Grisham fashion, he nails the hardships of small time lawyers who take on a big case. The lesson is timeless. Small time lawyers who take on big cases almost always go broke whether they win or lose because litigating against giant corporations is inevitably a test of financial resources and staying power, not the skill of the attorneys or the case itself. The moment that one side has the money to file one more appeal, or even more motion, and the other side doesn’t have the money to respond the game is over.

If Grisham had stuck to this theme and developed his point to its logical conclusion, that is that the disparity of funding between litigants in the justice system often perverts justice, he would have had a winner. In this part of the book he was on solid ground that he, a former small town trial lawyer, understood perfectly, and he was stating facts for civilians through his fiction that every lawyer who has been in practice over a year or two takes for granted.

But, it appears that Grisham wrote a good short novel or even a novella and his publishers told him that he needed two hundred pages more to meet his quota. And given that, he launches into unlikely conjecture that stretches his credibility to the breaking point and past.

The second half of the book is a highly improbable parade of horrors about the dangers of a conservative cabal of greedy big businessmen and sycophantic evangelical leaders projecting their influence into state judicial elections and stealing justice from the poor and downtrodden victims of big business greed. Grisham's oversimplistic, melodramatic handling of very complex, multi-dimensional issues in the justice system in which both sides of the political aisle share blame lost me about half way through the book. But then, his thinly disguised attack on Judicial Watch, Focus on the Family, The American Family Association and others caused me to put the book down and not pick it up again.

There was an attempt to balance this one sided theme further with some discussion of the inherent “insider” nature of judicial elections and how bar associations and politicians do the selection of our judges and trial lawyers for the most part do the election. Grisham chose to portray this side of the equation as the underfunded champions of truth, justice and the American Way. After reading thirty or forty pages of this crap, I simply gave up. It was apparent that Grisham was writing a one sided political screed just in time for the election and I had paid him good money to do it.

And, that’s a pity. In the past, I have respected Grisham. I still respect his past work. But, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I will probably now buy Grisham’s future books in used paperback rather than new hardback since I may not be keeping them or even reading them through.

The Missing Cache ...

2008-05-13T17:21:00.005-05:00

In the last episode of the mystery that has become my blog, I explained how an article very critical of John McCain suddenly disappeared from my blog server. I further explained that the blog entry could still be read in Google's wonderful "cache" feature which preserves deleted web pages, etc. for posterity.

I just checked my last blog entry and clicked on the link to the cached blog entry that had gone missing. More strangely still, the Google cache entry is now missing as well.

But, further investigation leads me to believe that it was not sinister forces in the McCain campaign that cause the disappearances because the TownHall.com column I quoted extensively (60% of the blog entry) can still be read HERE. I have always taken a pretty loose attitude toward quoting and using stuff from Townhall.com. I always link and give proper attribution but they are a public policy organization. They publish their material on the web for it to be quoted and distributed. To date, I have never had a complaint from Towhnall.com, Salem Communications or any of their columnists.

That leaves only two possible sources. Either Mr. Hawkins personally took exception to my long quote of his blog or Amway took exception to my relating my own experiences with them in the "80's. The blog author, John Hawkins, is a former AMWAY distributor who has good things to say about AMWAY despite the fact that he admits that he left the organization with less money than he began with. Link HERE.

Officially, AMWAY has been cleared by the Federal Courts of being a Ponzi scheme because of internal regulations designed to avoid the legal elements of one. It is a legal pyramid scheme aka a "multi-level marketing company." There is a difference in the law. However, if you Google the words AMWAY and Ponzi, you will get a fascinating read. But, also be advised that AMWAY has a reputation for aggressively pursuing online sources that are critical of their company so be careful if you decide to blog about what you read.

Shoot, I just meant to be critical of John McCain and Country Club Conservatism not AMWAY. I just assumed that everybody in America already knew about AMWAY.

The Missing Blog ...

2008-05-10T07:19:00.002-05:00

The strangest thing has happened. My last blog entry titled "A Political Ponzi Scheme" has simply disappeared. Gone into thin air. It is missing from my blog server and missing from BlogNetNews Oklahoma which mirrors my blog. If you Google the term "Bill Kumpe Ponzi Scheme" the web index entries for the articles still appear but the links direct you to a statement that the blog entry has been removed. I did not remove it.

This blog entry was highly critical of the current GOP leadership and compared the GOP to a well known multi level marketing scheme. It was not original for the most part but rather an extended quote from another blogger whose work was featured on TownHall.com. Everything was properly attributed. I added commentary at the end.

If someone, either the author or someone mentioned in the blog entry has a problem with what was said in that blog entry, I would ask them to contact me privately.

But, in the meanwhile, thanks to the modern web where nothing really disappears, the cached version of the article can be read at the following link:

A Political Ponzi Scheme?

I could say a lot of things about the First Amendment, free speech, the ghost of McCain Feingold and political parties that are afraid of what a couple of bloggers have to say .... but I won't. The missing blog entry says it all. Be afraid folks. Be very afraid.

The Dirty Little Secret of Tort Reform

2008-05-05T14:27:00.004-05:00

Just about "everybody" in the GOP agrees that so-called "tort reform" is a good idea. And, they have convinced a lot of voters who should know better that giving up their rights to be heard by a jury of their peers in a civil dispute may be the only way that they can "save" private health care. Unfortunately, that is just not the case.

It is no secret that insurance companies were heavily invested in commercial real estate before that market crashed a few years ago. And, they have been trying to make it up ever since by raising premiums. And they have also been trying their best to rig the court system so that it is nearly impossible to bring a civil action against them. But, the cost of medical care is not being driven up by so-called frivolous lawsuits nearly so much as it is by mismanagement, recalcitrance and outright incompetence by insurance companies. Anyone who has ever gone through the mind numbing torture that is dealing with a mid level insurance clerk should already suspect this.

But, why should you believe me. After all, I am a lawyer, one of those greedy *&^()%$'s that are trying to steal your wealth and make you die without your medicine so that I can drive a Rolls and give millions to Hillary or Obama's campaign.

Well, there is a simple way to prove my point. What if you could take the insurance costs out of a typical hospital bill and see how much less your health care provider could provide the same services for if you did not have to deal the insurance companies? There is an easy way to do that. Some hospitals ADVERTISE cash discounts of from fifty to seventy five percent for patients who pay cash up front for medical care and many others quietly provide one. The following is typical (link HERE):

Q. Does El Camino Hospital offer a discount if I pay cash for services?

A. Yes, El Camino Hospital extends a 75% cash discount to patients without insurance who choose to pay with cash, or to patients receiving services not covered by insurance who choose to pay with cash, or patients who choose to pay cash for services in lieu of billing their insurance.

One major Tulsa area hospital offers a fifty percent cash discount for on services paid for in cash in advance. So, that makes it pretty clear that at least fifty percent of the cost of medical care is tied up in collecting from INSURANCE COMPANIES. Think about that for a second. The administrative costs of collecting medical fees from insurance companies, Medicare, etc. is anywhere from fifty to seventy five percent of the total bill. There's something really wrong with that business plan.

It looks to me as though doctors and hospitals could collect the same fees they are collecting now without continual fee increases or destroying the constitution if they could simply get insurance companies to pay them what's due them for less that fifty percent of the take. Any "normal" company that charged fifty percent or more the total charge for "handling charges" would probably be brought up on charges by their state's consumer affairs divsion. Why should insurance companies get a pass?

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“Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty. Without them we have no other fortification against being ridden like horses, fleeced like sheep, worked like cattle, and fed and clothed like swine and hounds.” —John Adams, 1774

Hard Cases Make Bad Law

2008-05-04T06:00:00.008-05:00

In a copyrighted story, the AP is reporting that the arrest warrant that triggered the largest child seizure in American history since the "pacification" of the Native Americans has been dropped:

A Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman would not say why the warrant was dropped for Dale E. Barlow, 50, who lives in Colorado City, Ariz. Barlow has denied knowing the 16-year-old girl who called a crisis center.
The girl reported that she was a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and that she was beaten and raped at the sect's Eldorado ranch.
An investigation led to the April 3 raid, in which state welfare workers took 463 children living at the Yearning For Zion Ranch. A boy was born to one of the sect's mothers Tuesday; he and the other children remain in state custody.
Authorities have not located the 16-year-old girl and are investigating the source of the call.
Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger would not say when the warrant for Barlow was dropped, only that "it is no longer active."

Link to story HERE. A first year law student could have gotten that warrant kicked given the events that followed. It is entirely possible that the only people that should have been arrested, the adult male perpetrators of statutory rape will walk on those charges because Texas CPS decided to make headlines instead of exercise restraint and do their job.

There is an old saying that "hard cases make bad law." The meaning of it is that precedent setting decisions should never be made on an unusual set of facts. This is a classic example of hard cases making bad law and I fear there is no way that it can resolve without the parental rights of a lot innnocent people suffering in the process.

On Difficult Lawyers ....

2008-05-02T12:33:00.012-05:00

Recently, Judge Vickie Miles LaGrange of The United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma struck a blow for the good guys in our profession and it is now being reported around the country. An article about her action can be found in the ABA Journal. (Link HERE.) And, it is being commented upon in the upper echelons of the legal blogosphere as well. (Link HERE.) Her order speaks for itself. Click on the images to read it. There is a classic line in the Motion for Protective Order that prompted this order:

" The seriousness of the allegations and the potential for a significant verdict justify an aggressive defense but not a defense based upon personal attacks, character assassination or threats and innuendos ..."

Having been the victim of such attacks myself, I can fully understand why the motion was filed and am glad to see that Oklahoma judges are refusing to put up with such conduct.